


Strikes Thrice

by crossedsabers10S



Category: DreamWorks Dragons (Cartoon), How to Train Your Dragon (Movies), The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Attempt at Humor, Banter, Codependency, Crack Crossover, Crossover, F/F, F/M, Fem!Dagur the Deranged, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, How Do I Tag, Implied/Referenced Torture, Imprisonment, Multi, One Shot Collection, Past Torture, References to Norse Religion & Lore, The Augustine Society, Vampires, no i don't know how to tag why do you ask
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:28:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 19,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24628576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossedsabers10S/pseuds/crossedsabers10S
Summary: Damon and Enzo had company in Augustine's cells. This changes a few things.“Oh, come on. You can’t just…. Call yourself a Viking. For one, it’s a verb. Two, not every Nordman went a-viking. Some of us were just farmers,” she smirks obnoxiously at Klaus and Elijah. “Who had never been on a raid. Or seen battle.”“And some of us,” Elijah says, “were not barbarians who drugged ourselves into battle rages over a few golden trinkets.”“Trinkets?” she snickers. “Pffft. One time I made off with a golden cross the size of me. We had to chop it into pieces to fit in the longship.”Klaus rolls his eyes. “And I’m sure you and your unwashed hordes were very impressed. Our family owned an entire town.”“I was Chief of my tribe,” Dagur points out.“Are you… having a dick measuring contest?” Damon asks, almost delighted.
Relationships: Dagur the Deranged & Damon Salvatore & Lorenzo "Enzo" St. John, Dagur the Deranged/Mala, Damon Salvatore & Dagur, Damon Salvatore & Lorenzo "Enzo" St. John, Elena Gilbert/Stefan Salvatore, Lorenzo "Enzo" St. John & Dagur
Comments: 18
Kudos: 54





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick thing, I've had the idea rattling around in my head--I don't actually know where it came from, it just popped up one day. May or may not continue these. For now they're just going to be a few one shots set in the same universe.
> 
> Basically, Dagur the Deranged from HTTYD is both a woman--because, .....I have no excuses, I just thought it would be cool to explore--and somehow in TVD universe.
> 
> Also! Disclaimer: I don't own the Vampire Diaries, How to Train Your Dragon, or the Dreamworks Dragons Cartoons.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They've been in Augustine for a few months at this point.
> 
> Edited as of 12/23 so the timeline makes more sense.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for mentions of torture and swearing.

“And then I said ‘get out of my sight!’ Get it? Do you get it? ....Is it bad that I find this funny?”

“Yes,” Damon answers without looking. “You’re a horrible person.”

He slumps harder into the concrete at her laughter. It was loud and snorting. A pig with a head cold would be quieter. Probably more ladylike, too. It went on far longer than it should have and every time it seemed to end something would set her off again.

“I’m glad one of us finds this amusing,” Enzo says, and Damon wishes that he didn’t sound so sincere.

Poor bastard cared about the unlucky fuckers stuck in the cells next to him too much. It was embarrassing. It would probably be more embarrassing if Damon wasn’t stuck in the same boat. Same prison cell. Whatever.

Dagur laughs again, deranged as always, but this one is higher pitched and tinged with pain.

“Sedation wearing off?” Damon asks, turning to look at her for the first time since the Augustine scientists shoved her back into her cell. He’d been too busy staring at the guards, vividly fantasizing about what it would be like to rip out their throats.

He almost didn’t even want to eat them, just watch them drown in their own blood and gloat as life left their eyes. Then he’d turn them. And then stick them in a cage right before sunrise without a Daylight charm. And then throw a tarp over the cage and wait for them to heal before taking it off again. And repeat, and so on until he finally gets tired of hearing them scream.

Except he also wanted to eat them. Eat anyone. Hell, at this point he’d settle for a _squirrel_ so long as it had blood in it.

To distract himself from the way he can feel his skin slowly desiccating he lets himself study his companions.

Damon was the lucky one who got the middle cage, stuck right in between the only other occupants of this cell block. There were others sometimes, Damon has heard their screams, but he’s never seen them. The only other vampires he’s seen in months were Enzo and Dagur. Enzo was here when Damon arrived, Dagur arriving drugged to the gills and raving a few weeks later.

Enzo looked the same as he had four months ago, when Damon had first been thrown into this hell-hole. Dark haired and handsome if underfed and unflinchingly resolute in his hope that one day they would escape. No matter how long he had been here—an entire decade playing test subject before Damon arrived—no matter what was done to him, he never lost that spark of hope.

Damon thinks that all the experimenting has given him brain damage. Or given Damon brain damage, because, damn him, Enzo gave him hope too. It was hard to sink into despair when Enzo was still so stubbornly certain in their eventual freedom and has been here a decade longer. Damon definitely couldn’t give in first. He was nothing if not competitive.

Enzo was, in the theme of honesty about embarrassing attachments, the only thing keeping Damon sane. To sound utterly _cliche_ : Enzo was the one bright spot in this place.

Maybe Dagur too, but Dagur being responsible for anyone’s sanity was a thought better left alone. Unhinged didn’t begin to describe her. Damon didn’t know for sure how old she was—some vamps definitely got crazier with age and she had that in spades—but she was old. Older than Enzo, older than Damon, and Damon half suspected she was older than Katherine had been— _is_ —as well.

Dagur’s hair was getting shaggy. Hair on vampires might grow slowly, but it did grow. And somehow it was still the brightest thing in the room despite the fact that none of them have had anything more than a hose down as a bath in actual months; it was as obnoxious as the rest of her, fire-red and eye catching. Dagur’s barbarian chic look she had rocked coming in was getting long. Except a few places on the sides where it grew patchy. Dagur had explained it away as lightning damage; Damon could definitely believe that the crazy-woman had been struck by lightning before being turned. Probably multiple times.

Between the horrifying haircut and the occasional bout of talking to herself Damon would definitely not be seen with her in public under normal circumstances. Unfortunately, these were very much not normal circumstances.

Dagur grins at him, wide and unflinching. Damon doesn't bother to smile back. It’s not like she’d be able to see it. “You mean I’m _not_ supposed to feel all numb and tingly? Too bad,” she says, and tilts her head to the side in thought. “Not at all like the mushrooms though. Not enough colors. Or screaming.” She giggles, high and grating. “So much screaming.”

The empty sockets of her eyes are sewn shut, every stitch medically precise. Someone must have aced their med courses to get those stitches so even. You couldn’t say that the Augustines employed _amateurs_ , at least.

Sometimes Damon found comfort in that. So that when Stefan finally showed his bunny-eating ass and got on with the rescue Damon could at least defend himself with the fact that he’d been imprisoned for four months by _professionals_.

Enzo interrupts Damon’s mental Stefan laughing at him for getting caught by humans in the first place. Damon would be more grateful if he wasn’t about to absolutely _destroy_ mental Stefan with a witty comeback.

“Dagur,” Enzo says, all concerned like he could do something from two cells away, “was it just…” he hesitates. Damon doesn't know why. God knows they’ve all seen each other in worse condition than missing a few pieces.

Dagur groans. “I’m fine,” she says petulantly. Like missing a couple of essential organs was no worse than scraping a knee and she resented the asking.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time skip~
> 
> I'm planning to go back and flesh out the past later, but wanting to write this scene is literally what started this whole thing.

“Some of us were _real_ Vikings,” Dagur says, as she hops over the couch to land on the cushions. She sprawls out next to Damon, somehow taking up twice as much space as she needs to.

Klaus growls at her, eyes flashing yellow in warning.

Dagur cheerfully ignores him, only yawning pointedly in his direction. Murder sparks in Klaus’ eyes and half the room tenses.

Stefan casually--and when Damon says casually he means obvious enough that someone on the moon could see it--slides to Elena, who tucks herself under his arm like a puzzle piece. There’s almost an audible click. Apparently they’ve gotten back together.

Again.

Interestingly enough, seeing this only sends a twinge through Damon’s chest, instead of the usual stabbing pain.

“I am a real Viking. I am a thousand years old.”

Damon takes a sip of his drink and casually dodges Stefan’s raised eyebrow at Dagur’s proximity. So what if she was practically on top of him? It’s Dagur. Damon would like to see Stefan try and educate a millenia old berserker on personal space. God knows Damon has tried.

“Sure,” Dagur agrees, “faker.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Caroline asks, sending Klaus a look.

Klaus settles reluctantly and Damon barely resists fake cracking a whip. Sadly, in the name of the truce between the Mystic Falls Gang ™ and the Original Family (and Dagur, who insisted that she was on Team DED--Dagur, Enzo, Damon-- and that Damon and Enzo were too; Enzo readily agreed, but Damon refused until Dagur coughed up where she hid his favorite silk shirt) Damon wasn’t allowed to needlessly antagonize people upon the pain of witchy juju.

(Actual pain. Bonney had deigned to give him a demonstration of what exactly she would do to him if he screwed this up. He’d had to find another shirt after, the one he was wearing had too many blood stains even for him.)

Dagur snorts. “Oh, come on. You can’t just…. Call yourself a Viking. For one, it’s a verb. Two, not every Nordman went a-viking. _Some_ of us were just farmers,” she smirks obnoxiously at Klaus and Elijah. “Who had never been on a raid. Or seen battle.”

“And some of us,” Elijah says like the gentleman he was, which is to say, politely condescending with a twist on his face that very clearly read ‘I can kill you and not even stain my suit,’ “were not barbarians who drugged ourselves into battle rages over a few golden trinkets.”

Dagur laughs. And laughs. And laughs. At Elena’s and Caroline’s increasingly uncomfortable looks Damon elbows her in the side. Dagur doesn’t stop laughing, but she does do it quieter.

“Trinkets?” she snickers. “Pffft. One time I made off with a golden cross the size of _me_.” Dagur is five eleven with shoulders that are broader than Damon’s. “We had to chop it into pieces to fit in the longship.”

Klaus rolls his eyes. “And I’m sure you and your unwashed hordes were very impressed. Our family owned an entire town.”

“I was Chief of my tribe,” Dagur points out.

“Are you… having a dick measuring contest?” Damon asks, almost delighted.

The Originals were as bound by the truce as he was--it was Rebekah’s wrath instead of Bonnie’s--but that hasn’t stopped them from pulling their ‘I’m a thousand years older than you and can snap you like a toothpick’ schitk.

Too bad Dagur is as old as they are and just as strong. Sure, she can’t heal from staking and doesn’t have that neat compelling other vampires trick, but she was a good fighter and Damon has seen her chug vervain like it was a pop drink. Elijah ‘I like to fondle people still-beating hearts’ Mikaelson will have to find a new gimmick.

Dagur blinks at him. “I like axes better.”

Damon pats her head. “So you’ve said. Axes. Swords. Spears, crossbows, maces. Is there any weapon that you don’t like?”

“Guns. They cheat.” Lip poked out like a toddler’s, Dagur crosses her arms. Damon idly admires the way this makes her biceps move before patting her again in condescending reassurance.

“There, there,” he says. “I’m sure you can find some random policeman to eat if it will make you feel better. Maybe you can let them shoot you a few times first, really freak them out.”

Caroline glares at him.

“Some random policeman from out of town and therefore not someone anyone here knows. Or is related to,” Damon amends.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Introductions!
> 
> Stefan and Elena meet Damon’s friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will eventually figure out a timeline, I swear, just know that I’m picturing Enzo and Dagur just showing up post-Tomb Opening. 
> 
> Currently rewatching TVD, because I haven’t seen it in ....so many years. At least three.

“So,” Elena says, trying to be friendly, “you're Damon’s friend? I didn’t know Damon had friends,” she jokes.

“Me either,” Stefan says, far more seriously. “When did you meet?”

Damon sighs. “Don’t be such a mood-killer, Stef.” He slings an arm around Enzo’s shoulders. “Enzo, this is Stefan and his girlfriend, Elena. Stefan, Elena, this is Enzo.”

Stefan has to resist gaping when Enzo shifts slightly in response and Damon all but presses the length of his body against the other vampire. He looks at Elena to see if she had noticed Damon _voluntarily_ putting himself in bodily contact with people to see her smiling at the sight.

Okay. So she’s noticed. And has apparently decided that it was a good thing.

Enzo smiles at them, friendly enough except for around the eyes. “Elena, you are as lovely as your name is. And--”

“Let me guess? I look familiar?” Elena asks, good naturedly. She’s gotten used to being compared to Katherine.

“Actually, I was going to say that I’m glad this town has such lovely sights in it.”

“Oops,” Elena says. “Sorry, I’m just really used to being compared to—“

“Katherine?” he guesses. “Never met her, but I have been told that you resemble her to an uncanny degree.”

Enzo turns to Stefan, smile pleasant, but eyes studious. “And you’re Stefan? It’s nice to finally meet you. We’ve heard a lot about you, you know.”

Stefan wishes he could say the same. But Damon has never even so much as hinted that he had any friends; especially vampire friends that he felt comfortable enough with to introduce to Elena.

And Enzo was obviously a vampire. Even if Stefan couldn’t _tell_ , and the still paleness and the daylight charm didn’t give him away, then the way he eyed the bartender’s neck did.

He also, Stefan noted warily, looked like Damon’s funhouse reflection. Short dark hair artfully mussed over handsome features gave him a bad boy look. The same kind of dark, easy charm exuded from him. The leather jacket didn’t help the resemblance.

A woman drops down into the booth next to Damon. Stefan has half a second to be annoyed at his brother bringing his snacks to the table when he notices the odd looking pendant swinging from her neck. It’s heavy looking, the thick chain barely looking strong enough to hold up the hammer shaped intricately decorated charm. It also had a lapis lazuli stone embedded in it.

Another vampire? Great. Just—was Mystic Falls about to become an all you can eat buffet? he thinks irritably.

“So much about you,” she says, and offers Stefan and Elena what Stefan thinks is meant to be a friendly smile. It’s a bit too wide and her eyes too intense. “Some would say too much, but we like Damon enough to put up with it.” Somehow, without her dropping the slightly manic grin, that entire sentence came out like a threat.

“So, _that’s_ where you’ve been,” Damon says, and Stefan follows his gaze to see two women stagger out of the bathroom, both walking a bit bowlegged and one with her jacket tied around her neck. “Have fun?”

Stefan twitches. Feeding in the bathrooms at the Grille? Damon’s friends weren't any less reckless than Damon himself, then. At least the two women were still alive.

“All the fun,” the woman agrees, nodding her head, smiling wider than before. It was disconcerting now, and Stefan edges closer to Elena, ready to whisk her away at any sign of trouble.

“And I do not talk about Stefan that much,” Damon adds.

Enzo snorts and exchanges a look with the redhead. “Sure,” he agrees patronizingly, before putting one hand under his chin thoughtfully. “Although, what about the one time in Savannah, with the karaoke place and the--”

Damon interrupts, eyes wide. “Hey!” He jerks his head at Stefan and Elena. “There are children present!” he says, fake scandalized.

Stefan has to send his brother an annoyed glance at that, even if he’s loath to let his guard down around these newest strangers. That joke has been old for an actual century. He’s almost two hundred years old, and not a child.

“I thought you’d be taller,” the redhead tells Stefan. She leans against Damon’s other side, Damon doesn’t even seem to notice, but Enzo shoots her a fond smile that actually seems sincere.

She doesn't look like Damon’s usual type at all, shoulders broad and imposing, with an almost-punk haircut that was bright red and wild—it was shaved short at the sides, leaving a strip of hair long on top that was held away from her face by a thick braid. Scars trailed down one cheek and tattoos peaked out from underneath a t-shirt that read ‘I do what I want, where I want, when I want, except I gotta ask my wife, one sec….’

All in all, nothing like the women Damon usually favored. Nothing about her was conventionally beautiful. A strong jawline and a sharp nose gave her face a masculine cast, more handsome than pretty. The odd facial tattoo—makeup?—three blue claw marks over her left eye, didn’t help.

“You've told them about me?” Stefan asks, and is actually surprised. Damon having ….friends was one thing, but sharing his past?

“A few times,” Enzo says with a smirk.

“Don’t worry, little brother. It was all good things,” Damon says, and funnily enough Stefan isn’t reassured at all. “Oh, and Stefan, this,” he elbows the redhead hard enough that she grunts, “is Dagur. Don’t pay attention to anything she says. Ever. She’s _crazy_ ,” he whispers, bringing a hand up to his face like Dagur couldn’t hear him, even without her being a vampire and having supernaturally acute hearing.

Stefan raises a hand in greeting and watches Dagur plant a fist in Damon’s side without losing the grin. Damon grimaces but huffs a laugh.

“Dagur,” Damon turns to the redhead, who was watching him in amusement. “This is Stefan and Elena. If you would do your best to not kill either of them, I would appreciate it.” Stefan and Elena blink at that, because Damon doesn't sound like he’s joking. “Or grievously injure them,” he tacks on as an afterthought. “That either.”

“Me? Hurt your little bro and his girl?” she gasps. “Hurt anyone? Lies! Lies and slander!”

Damon just stares at her, unimpressed.

“Fine,” she acquiesces. “I’ll do my absolute best. I will, in fact, not even semi-permanently harm them, this I vow.”

“If you want us to take you seriously,” Enzo suggests, “how about you uncross your fingers, love?”

Dagur looks down at her crossed fingers, easily within view of everyone at the table, looks up, and then shrugs with a sheepish grin.

“Haha, oops?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for: alcohol, nudity, language, and a brief description of past gore. And blood.
> 
> Hurt/Comfort chapter, because I just really want Damon to have friends sometimes and this is the result.
> 
> Edited as of 12/23. I added a few things, corrected a few others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also. Still need to watch more TVD to get more of a feel for the show. I know, like, vaguely what happened, but I can’t remember the specifics all that well. Mostly, I’ve been reading episode summaries when I need to remember something, so if I don’t make sense when it comes to the timeline, that’s why.

“So,” Enzo says. “Katherine wasn’t in the tomb.” And there was no pity in his voice--they all knew each other too well for that--but Damon has to resist the urge to tell him to fuck off with his sympathy anyways.

He doesn’t need it. Pity or sympathy or the way that they both seem determined to act like Damon hasn’t made the screw up of the century.

Two centuries, he thinks bitterly, and wants to smash something against a wall. He takes another drink instead.

Bottles littered the bed, empty and otherwise, and Damon’s usually spotless room smelled like a distillery. He was sure that he smelled worse. Dried blood and tomb-dust still smudged his skin.

He’s spent most of his existence searching for a way to open that godforsaken tomb to save what he thought was the love of his un-life and Katherine hadn’t even…. She didn’t even bother to tell him that she was alive, let alone free.

Damon laughs, nothing amused in the sound. “No,” he says, and chugs half the bottle of something. He doesn’t even know what it is, from the burn of it it might even be some of Zach’s distilled vervain. He can’t really bring himself to care.

“Do you want me to kill her? I can add her to The List,” Dagur offers. She looks up from where she’s prodding at Damon’s bookshelf and if Damon were more sober, he’d shoo her away from all the priceless and breakable antiques.

Damon doesn’t move from where he’s sprawled over his bed. “No thanks. Though, I’m touched, really.” He tries for sarcastic, but thinks he misses the mark.

The sad part of that is that he _is_ touched.

They didn’t have to come to Virginia for him. And it was for him, no matter what Enzo said about sight-seeing. God knows there was nothing worth seeing in Mystic Falls.

He’d called them, after the tomb had been opened and Katherine had been missing from it. Damon had been drunk and hurting and regretting the last one hundred and seventy something years he’d been alive. Called, and he doesn’t remember what he said, but it must have been something bad, they’d been on the next plane out the next morning.

They both showed up at the house, and maybe it was lucky that Stefan had school. He probably would have thought that they were some of the tomb vampires. Damon really doesn’t feel up to introducing Enzo and Dagur to him right now.

Dagur blurs over to him and Damon doesn’t even complain about the way she practically lands on top of him and sticks her face in his, blocking his wonderful view of the ceiling, green eyes large and worried.

Honestly, the concern from the both of them was….

He didn’t feel _better_.

He was starting to think that he was never going to. His chest still ached with a kind of rawness that made him want to be human again, just so that he didn’t have a vampire’s alcohol tolerance. And every time he remembered his mad, obsessive, centuries-long quest to free someone who had never even needed saving made him want to walk out into the sun sans ring.

But Enzo’s steady calm, the way he was as witty and fun and annoyingly optimistic as ever, made Damon feel less like he would make a stunningly handsome ash pile. Dagur’s way of consoling him, which has so far consisted of offers of a contract hit and various shiny objects being thrown his way, helps too. As much as the thought of that baffles him.

There’s something… sincere in their care for him. Not even his own brother has done more than offer him a pat on the back and a few words.

Dagur drops her head so that their foreheads touch and she says, entirely seriously, “If you ever change your mind,” Damon stares up at her with wide eyes, because Dagur is entirely focused on him right now, her usual crazy channeled into an intensity that leaves him unable to look away, “I will hunt her to the ends of the earth.”

Damon is almost tempted to say yes, just to see if she’ll follow through with it.

And then sense kicks in past the booze and he knows that she _will_. Or die trying. And he’s spent enough time chasing after Katherine’s ghost. Dagur doesn't need to do it too.

“No,” he says, and she studies him for a moment longer. “No,” he repeats, firmer. “She’s not….she’s not worth it, worth that.”

“She hurt you,” Dagur says. “And that’s worth it, _you_ are worth it.” But she gets off of him anyway and makes her way back to poking at his stuff.

Damon takes a moment to absorb that and is suddenly very glad that vampires can’t blush.

“Besides,” she adds over her shoulder, “I do a _mean_ Blood Eagle.”

And then it’s Enzo’s turn apparently, because the next thing Damon knows is that he’s being hauled up over one leather clad shoulder and shoved unceremoniously into the shower.

“I don’t smell that bad, do I? Is it the bourbon?” Damon tries to joke, but the alcohol is making his head woozy and he has to brace himself against the wall to keep standing.

Enzo ignores him, instead pulling at Damon’s shirt Damon gets the picture and clumsily cooperates until it’s off.

The shirt hits the floor and Damon stares down at it. He--probably shouldn't leave it on the floor. But if he leans down then there's a good chance he won’t be able to stand again and Enzo might have seen him in way worse conditions than drunk off his ass, but for some reason the idea of letting Enzo see how pathetic Damon could be right now makes his stomach turn.

Enzo snags the shirt off the floor and tosses it back into the bedroom--judging from the startled curse, it had hit Dagur--and Damon can only blink when Enzo goes right back to stripping him.

“Whoa, there,” Damon says, and pushes Enzo’s hands away from the button of his jeans. “I’m going to need some cash before you go any further. I don’t do free shows.”

Enzo snorts at that blatant lie. “You absolutely do, Damon, don’t even.”

Damon can’t actually refute that one. “Fair,” he says, and lets Enzo help him step out of his jeans.

Now standing in the bathroom naked, Damon watches Enzo bundle up his pants, toss them out the door, and then motions towards Damon. “Are you going to turn on the water or….?” Enzo sighs when Damon doesn’t answer fast enough, just reaches past him and Damon has never been so glad for splurging on the hot water heater, because the icy spray heats up quickly.

Damon pushes the hair plastered across his eyes away and blinks. Because….

“Why are _you_ naked?” he asks dumbly, and his question is answered two seconds later when Enzo steps into the shower next to him.

“Didn’t pack swimwear, sorry,” Enzo says, unapologetically as possible.

Leaning back, Damon closes his eyes and lets the hot water wash over him. “I’ve seen worse.”

Enzo chuckles but doesn't reply, just grabs the soap and Damon startles a little when hands brush his shoulders. Then he relaxes, because this is Enzo. Enzo has literally helped Damon shove his guts back into his body once. You can’t really get more intimate than that.

“That feels nice,” Damon murmurs. He’ll probably regret being so candid when he’s sober, but right now he just leans into Enzo’s chest and lets the other vampire scrub the dirt and blood and booze away.

* * *

Half an hour later, Damon is clean as he’s going to get and almost human-warm from the hot water. Damon is also becoming increasingly sober and is realizing that he hasn't had blood in three days.

His head aches enough to almost drown out his heart.

They both exit the bathroom accompanied by a cloud of steam and Damon has to stop for a second to take in the suspiciously clean room. All the bottles are missing and the bed is freshly made with clean sheets. There aren’t even any suspicious dents on the wall.

It is also empty.

“Where did Dagur go?” he asks, half wary of the answer, half past caring about whatever havoc the older vampire is causing. “Also.” He gestures to the room. “Did you know she can clean things? I didn’t know she knew how to do that.”

The Council is on high alert. The last thing Damon needs is to find out that she got caught and ate the Council. Liz would be pissed.

Enzo, however, doesn’t bother looking concerned or surprised. He just pats Damon’s back and pushes him until he’s sprawled out on the bed. “She’s downstairs.”

Taking a second to listen, Damon hears muffled movement from the floor below them. Then a bang. “That better not have been anything important.”

Not pausing in rummaging through Damon’s dresser, Enzo gives a distracted, “Maybe,” and then extracts a pair of pajama bottoms that Damon had honestly forgotten he owned. “Don’t worry about it. Pants?” he asks.

Damon takes a second to translate that into American. “Nah. Underwear is for chumps.” And then sputters when fabric hits him in the face. He sends a half-hearted glare Enzo’s way, but pulls them on.

Enzo blurs past and digs through his own bag, piled up in the corner beside Dagur’s, and pulls out some short shorts. Damon briefly considers wolf whistling.

The door opens. Dagur strolls in, wearing neon green sheep-printed pajama bottoms and nothing else.

“Drinks~” Dagur sing-songs, three mugs in her hands. The smell of blood wafts from them. She presses one into Damon’s hands, passes the other to Enzo, and then downs her own like it’s a beer and she’s surrounded by chanting frat boys.

“Have you just been walking around like that?” Damon asks, amused. He pictures Stefan coming home to a half naked Dagur heating up blood in the kitchen and can’t help but smirk at the mental image. Stefan probably wouldn’t even notice anything wrong with the picture--he’s used enough to Damon bringing girls over--until he tried to compel her to leave.

Dagur looks down. Nods. “Yeah? I remembered pants and everything.”

“Good for you,” Damon says, semi-sincerely. He sits up to lean against the headboard, shoving a few pillows away to make room. Then he sips at the mug, faster when he realizes how thirsty he is. A too short time later and the mug is empty and Damon is not pouting down at it.

“Here,” Enzo says nonchalantly, and exchanges Damon’s mug for his own. Damon stills and looks at him, hating the way he’s unsure, the way that—decades later—his eyes flit down to Enzo’s wrists.

“I ate earlier,” Enzo says at his hesitation.

Damon mutters his thanks and downs that one too.

“Did you bring the…?” Enzo sits down next to Damon. Damon shuffles over to make room and Enzo settles to his left.

Dagur looks offended. “Did I bring the—of course! How could you doubt me?”

Enzo hums. Looks her up and down. “So, where is it?”

Dagur freezes. “Ah, good question. One sec,” she blurs away, almost faster than Damon can track, and returns a second later, a small bag in her hand. She shoves it at Damon with a broad and expectant grin.

Giving Damon an expectant look as well, Enzo says, “Go on, open it.”

Damon stares down at the thing. “This isn’t going to be some kind of body part, is it?” It’s not large enough to be anything too gory, but a few fingers would definitely fit inside.

“Noooo? Why, do you want one?” Dagur asks, practically vibrating in place.

Enzo rolls his eyes. “Just open it,” he says.

Damon does, peeling back paper to reveal--

”A bracelet?” He turns it over in his hands. “You've already seen me naked, you don’t have to buy me jewelry,” he quips. Then he spots the blue stones embedded in it. “A daylight charm?” he asks.

They both nod.

Enzo explains. “We picked up from a witch in--”

“Svíaríki!” Dagur leaps forwards, landing on Damon’s other side. The bed bounces with her and she makes herself comfortable, starfishing across all the open space on the bed.

“--Sweden,” Enzo continues once he regains his balance. “It’s spelled. Heavily. No one but you should be able to take this off. No refunds. You're welcome.”

Damn, where was this when Stefan stole his Daylight ring?

Damon looks at the bracelet again, impressed. It’s one hell of an expensive gift. “Do I want to know what you had to do for the witch to get this? Or _to_ the witch?”

Dagur smirks, expression suddenly going dangerous. Her green eyes glint with savage glee. “No,” she answers him.

Damon turns to Enzo, who smiles pleasantly back at him. There’s something dark in his eyes, though.

“But don’t worry,” Dagur says, expression lightening. “They deserved it.”

“Right.” Damon turns the bracelet over once more before sliding it onto his wrist. The thick silver of it matches his ring, but the Old Norse knots that decorated it gave it a distinctly older feel. Then he spots the sigil tucked in among them. A dragon with wings outstretched and jaws open around its tail. “Wait,” he says, turning to Dagur. “Isn’t this….?”

Dagur looks away and starts humming loudly.

Damon stares at her for a second before turning to Enzo, who only raises an eyebrow at him and smirks fondly at the two of them.

“Right,” Damon repeats, a little higher than before.

Damon knows what that symbol is. Dagur has told them about her human tribe enough that Damon and Enzo could probably list out names and descriptions as well as she can. So he knows what it means to her to give him something with the Berserker Tribe’s dragon on it.

He clears his throat and is about to say something unbearably sappy--he blames the booze, even though he’s been almost sober since he’s drunk that blood, curse vampire healing--when Dagur abruptly shoves herself under the covers and red hair disappears as she presses a pillow over her head.

Enzo gives a quiet laugh and Damon shoots him a wide eyed look. Enzo laughs again at Damon’s face.

“Jet lag,” Enzo shrugs, as if vampires got jet-lag, what the hell.

“Uh-huh,” Damon says sarcastically. He prods at the Dagur-shaped lump and gets an obviously fake snore in response. “Does this mean it’s bedtime?” he snarks.

“Sure,” Enzo says easily. “Unless you want to watch TV?” he offers.

“Uh,” Damon replies after a beat. “No, I’m good.”

“All right then.” Enzo reclines back and closes his eyes. A minute later and he relaxes, breathing evening out, and it doesn’t take vampire senses to figure out that he’s fallen asleep.

Enzo always could fall asleep anywhere. Damon knows it comes from Augustine. He’s slept in far worse places than a bed and you took all the sleep you could get. He also can wake up at the drop of a pin, except when Damon shifts to join them under the covers he doesn't even twitch.

On Damon’s other side Dagur is now snoring for real, and anyone else and Damon would be beyond annoyed with the noise, but he’s too used to all the sounds Dagur makes asleep and awake for it to be anything but comfortable background noise.

Years of close contact would do that.

Damon stares at his two….friends? Friends doesn’t really seem like the right word for the two of them. He’d go with siblings, but that doesn’t fit either.

They’d spent five years in adjacent cells and then decades after either traveling together or keeping in contact. Damon doesn’t actually think he’s spent more time with anyone else. They’d separated when Damon had come to Mystic Falls, Enzo and Dagur apparently heading to _Sweden_ , but one phone call later and they’d come when he’d needed them.

No one’s ever….--no one’s ever picked him like that before. Not like these two. Not his father, not his brother, not Katherine.

It’s….nice, he thinks as he falls asleep between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, and for anyone who wants to know: Svíaríki is, as far as I can tell, Old Norse for Sweden. And a Blood Eagle is a ritual method of execution and punishment used by Vikings. It’s a painful, gory way to die and that’s what Dagur is offering/planning to do to Katherine. 
> 
> I actually like Katherine. She's an interesting character, but Dagur is Dagur and vengeance is her thing.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set in Season Two. After Caroline is turned by Katherine and is revealed as a new vampire.
> 
> Warnings for violence.

“Sucks to be you, buddy,” Damon tells the dead body. Elena can’t muster up the energy to admonish him for his lack of sympathy.

And before Elena has the chance to react, he falls to the ground, groaning in pain. She turns to Bonnie in surprise to see her staring down at Damon dispassionately before switching her heavy gaze to the water hose near them.

The hose comes to life and Elena takes a step back as it turns on all by itself, water creeping across the cement in an unnatural way. 

Bonnie glares at the vampire still moaning in pain. “I told you what would happen if anyone else got hurt,” she tells him, matter of fact.

Damon is curled up into a ball, clutching his face. “I didn’t do this!” he protests, voice strained.

No, Elena thinks, it was Caroline, before she shakes the thought from her head. It wasn’t Caroline’s fault that Katherine was a psychopath and killed her.

“Bonnie,” Elena says, “it wasn’t his fault.”

Bonnie shakes her head in denial. “Everything that happens is his fault, Elena.”

Elena was getting worried at the look on her friends face. “Bonnie,” she asks, “what are you doing?”

The water creeps closer to Damon. And instead of answering, Bonnie sets it on fire with a glance, like it was gasoline instead. It was something out of a nightmare, and Elena wants someone to wake her up.

“Bonnie, stop it!” Elena pleads, as the fire gets closer and closer to where Damon is still on the ground. “Bonnie, Bonnie, stop it!”

Bonnie doesn’t so much as twitch at her friends screaming, face made of stone as she stares down at Damon. It’s like she’s in a trance, the only thing real to her the way the vampire is moaning in agony.

Damon gasps and flails at the sight, but can’t move far before the fire catches on his legs. He panics, and starts kicking at it, but that does nothing to help, just fans the flames.

“Bonnie, stop it you're going to kill him!”

Elena is about to move, to do something to stop this, when the fire stops as quickly and as unnaturally as it started. Hope flares, for a split second, that Bonnie has come to her senses, but then she sees Damon’s friend, the redhead, holding Bonnie up in the air by her throat with one hand.

Elena lunges forwards, not even thinking about it, just grabs the woman’s arm and pulls as hard as she can. It doesn’t budge. “Let her go!” she cries out. The woman doesn't even look her way, just squeezes.

Bonnie is gasping for air, twisting and kicking the air, but nothing she does gets the vampire to release her. She glares, in the same way she had to drop Damon, but nothing happens. “Who--” the witch gasps, before choking and coughing. 

“Yeah,” the red headed vampire says, “that’s not going to work. Nice try, though,” she compliments, like Bonnie wasn’t clawing desperately at her face. Dagur ignores it, only yanking back when Bonnie gets too close to her eye. Blood drips across white teeth and Elena watches in disgust as it’s idly licked away.

Elena looks around wildly and grabs Damon’s discarded shovel. Bonnie’s face is flushing and her flailing is losing power as she loses oxygen.

Elena swings, as hard as she can, and the shovel hits the back of the vampire’s head with a sickening thump. 

The vampire doesn't move. “Ow,” she deadpans, and Elena drops the shovel with a clang.

“Dagur,” a voice calls from behind them and Elena whirls around to see Enzo crouched beside Damon. “Hurry it up.”

Dagur cracks her neck and lifts Bonnie even higher. “Mmmmh, maybe,” she says. Then she drags Bonnie close, and says, right in her face. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you to save the arson for special occasions? You can’t just break it out all willy-nilly. Buuuuuut, since you seem to like fire so much, I guess I could help you out with that.....” 

Bonnie doesn’t answer, couldn’t answer even if she wasn’t being choked, Elena panics as Bonnie’s eyes slide closed and she goes limp.

Elena jolts and grabs Dagur’ arm again, starts pulling hard as she can. “No,” she says, “don’t! It’s not her fault, our friend she….” Elena starts babbling.”Please!”

Dagur turns her head Elena’s way and snarls like an animal, right in her face. And once is enough, because Elena jerks back, every instinct she has screaming at her to get away from an angry predator.

“I’m fine,” Damon waves away Enzo’s hands. “Dagur, stop. Can’t believe I’m saying this, but don’t kill her.” He stands, and Enzo steadys him when he wobbles.

Dagur loosens her grip, just slightly, but Elena is relieved to notice Bonnie breathing again. “Really?” she asks, and Elena can’t help the way she glares at the vampire’s petulant tone. 

Damon looks up from brushing off his pants. “Yeah, put the witch down, chop chop.”

“Fine,” Dagur sighs. “I never get to kill things anymore,” she complains. Dropping Bonnie to the ground, she hops over her body and over to Damon and Enzo. 

Elena hits the ground, not caring about the water soaking through her jeans. “Bonnie?” She shakes Bonnie’s shoulder. “Bonnie, wake up.” 

Bonnie stirs. “Elena?” she whispers, and then winces. “Why did, why did you try to stop me?” she rasps out.

Elena looks down at the dark bruises already ringing Bonnie’s neck and says, “Hey, don’t speak, it’s fine. Let’s get you inside.”

She helps Bonnie to her feet and half carries her back into the building. 

“What did she try to do to you?” Elena hears Enzo ask conversationally from behind them.

“I think she tried to pop my brain,” Dagur answers, indifferent to the sheer horror that sentence implies.

“Huh,” Damon says.

“What?” Dagur asks.

Enzo is the one that replies to her. “Oh, nothing. It’s just. It’s no wonder it didn’t work.”

“Hey!”

Elena drags Bonnie back into the school to the sound of vampires laughing behind her.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning for mentions of torture, swearing, Augustine in general, and hallucinations.
> 
> Edited as of 12/23 and a thank you to thehelldoievenputhere for correcting my Swedish! Thanks again!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Back again. This chapter is set in Augustine. 
> 
> There's an attempt at Swedish in here and I used a translator, so if anyone sees anything wrong with it feel free to tell me.
> 
> As always, to anyone who's read this and liked it, thank you!

Muffled footsteps echo down the hallway. There’s a pause and then a muted _clang_ as a reinforced door swings closed.

Enzo blinks awake, barely conscious but already tense and blank eyed. He relaxes when he sees no one in the room they’re kept.

Yet.

“They couldn’t be quieter?” he complains, and stays outstretched on the hard pallet that some would try to pass off as a bed.

He automatically glances over to check on his cell-mates. Dagur is sprawled over her own pallet two cells down, snoring like a bear with a toothache. Damon is awake and tapping a beat out on the floor.

Enzo stifles a laugh when he realizes that it matches Dagur’s snoring.

“I think we have mice,” Damon mock-whispers to him. He’s been awake for awhile, idly counting the breaths of his companions. Another clang rings out, this one closer. Damon’s tapping stops. “Big mice.”

“Someone should call an exterminator then.”

“Oh, if only.” Damon’s eyes glaze over and, when he bares his teeth in a smile, there’s fang. “Or we could do the job, I feel more than qualified to take on some ... _rats_.”

“Soon,” Enzo promises. He cocks his head and listens to the faint voices. “Must be morning again.”

“No clue,” Damon makes a show of looking around at the solid stone walls of their cell block, gestures to a non-existent window, “haven’t seen the sun in ...four?” he guesses. “Four years now. Could be midnight for all I know.”

They both quiet when more noise echoes out, this one the tell-tell chatter of the morning crew, the assistants and ‘nurses’ who do the prep work.

And maybe the walls were soundproofed to human ears, but the vampires caught every word.

It was a blessing and a curse.

They could steel themselves for the upcoming horrors, sometimes, if they overheard enough to piece together what was going on.

But it did nothing to stop it. And nothing blocked out the screaming.

“What does Dr. Whitmore have planned for today?” one nurse asks. Her voice recognizable because she never shuts up, always talking or humming or singing under her breath.

She’s the blond one, with the green eyes and the sister who works as an actual nurse at a children’s hospital—the vampires know this because she brags about her “genius younger sister” to her colleagues all the time.

Enzo has come back from a session more than once drunkenly humming some catchy tune he’d picked up from her.

An assistant answers her, and Damon snarls at the sound of this one’s voice. “The Doctor wants to study cell regrowth. He says he might have found a pattern in how damage is prioritized.”

“What dosages should I prepare?” the blonde nurse asks.

“Hmmm?” There’s a rustle of papers.

“The sedatives,” she prompts.

“Oh, none. Just the usual round to transport a subject out of its cell.”

“Oooh, okay!” is the bright and cheerful response. “I hate calculating the numbers anyways.”

They both leave the room, moving further from the containment cells and their voices fade. A snatch of a song floats on the air, something bubbly and uplifting, before that too is taken away.

Damon swears, quiet and vicious. “No pain meds?” he hisses through his teeth. He swears again.

It was bad enough when you were drugged, but the sessions without the drugs were hellish.

“Once more unto the breach, my friends,” Enzo intones, one hand lifting an invisible sword aloft.

Damon gives him an unimpressed stare.

“What?” Enzo asks, infuriatingly calm. “I could start crying, but the last time I did that Dagur tried to _chew through_ her cell bars—her _vervain coated_ cell bars. I still don’t know if she was trying to comfort me or run away.”

“Running, definitely.” Damon deadpans, before rolling his eyes. “But, _Shakespeare_?” he questions. “ _That’s_ what you’re going with?”

“Spears?” Dagur jolts awake. Wiping drool off of her face, she blinks blearily at her cellmates.

“Of course that’s what wakes you,” Damon mutters. “No, no weapons,” Damon says, louder. “So calm your little barbarian heart down.”

Dagur blinks in disappointed confusion. She rakes red tufts away from her face and props herself up with one arm before turning to Enzo.

“Poetry.” Enzo answers her unasked question.

Dagur frowns at them. “You can’t just mention weapons and then not expect me to get excited. It’s like.... Telling someone not to be interested in a derelict wreck filled with booby traps. Doesn’t happen.”

“What…? No. Don’t tell me,” Damon tells her. He stretches, arching his back and uncaring of the way his thin and threadbare shirt rides up to reveal pale flesh. He sends a smirk at Enzo, who hadn’t bothered looking away. Enzo yawns back and Damon scowls, suddenly irritated.

“Yeah, no,” Dagur says, undaunted by Damon’s glare. “So, my brother, you know, the shrimpy one, I know I’ve told you about my beloved little--” Damon groans, interrupting Dagur’s story. “Hey, rude. Anyways. He got wind of this shipwreck, right--this was just after I broke out of the prison he put me in--”

“Maybe save it for later,” Enzo suggests. “It’s a no-drugs day.”

Dagur’s face freezes, falls, before a manic grin overtakes her face. “Great,” she says, sarcastic as _in_ humanly possible, smile cracking at the edges. “I hear those things are bad for you anyway, who needs opioids when you’re getting your intestines strung up like rigging?” Her face falls from forced cheer into something more far murderous.

“Uh-oh,” Damon sighs.

She lunges for the cell bars and shakes them, ignoring the scent of vervain-burned flesh.

“I’M GOING TO EAT YOUR GODS-BE-DAMNED LIVERS, LIKE A JÄVLA ÖRN, NI GRUPP AV RÅTTOR!” Dagur screams at the wall, dissolving into a bunch of curses in a language that the other two couldn’t parse.

Enzo collapses backwards onto his steel-feathered cot. “Well, it’s a good thing I wasn’t planning on trying to sleep.”

Dagur screams incoherently in rage.

“I blame you for this,” Damon tells him.

“I blame them,” Enzo says, jerking his hand towards the door.

Dagur roars, finally releasing the bars and begins pacing like a caged tiger. Burned chunks of skin flake off onto the ground as she throws her hands in the air.

* * *

Damon has been gone for hours.

The science-bitches have been on a dissection kick for the last month, with a special emphasis on observing how long it took for a vampire’s healing ability to regenerate damage.

Dagur and Enzo have already had their turns under the knife, both coming back weak and nauseous from the drugs.

Woozy from sedation, Enzo told them that he’d watched his fingers reattach, ligaments re-twining and bone snapping back together.

Dagur had actually annoyed the scientists into giving her another round of sedative. Apparently, they hadn’t liked her commentating on what color her inner organs were. Rude. Dagur is sure she’s seen more intestines than they have.

It was Damon’s turn today.

And they heard the order to disregard the medication before the door swung shut. He wanted to see if an increase in pain levels encouraged regeneration.

Damon stopped screaming an hour in.

“We can’t keep doing this,” Dagur says, uncharacteristically sober.

Enzo gives a weak laugh. “What else is there? This is our best chance and you know it,” he reminds her.

Dagur knows this.

Their plan to give Damon their blood rations in hopes that he would be strong enough to help them escape is a desperate one. But it is also the only chance they’ve had in years.

So they’d drink enough to stay alive—and pulling away was getting harder and harder every time she had to do it, but Dagur had been a warrior Chief once upon a time, she knows discipline, and Enzo’s will was made of something stronger than iron—and then pass the rest to Damon. Damon, because he was in the middle cell and there was less of a chance for their infrequent but sometimes present guard to notice their game.

She fears that if she doesn’t see the sky soon she truly will go as mad as her father had always accused her of being.

As it was, she spent far too much time talking to her long dead siblings for comfort.

Not that her hallucinations of her brother and sister are all that comforting.

True to life, Heather and Hiccup only made sarcastic comments.

Very unhelpful.

“You’re skin and bones, Sæti. They’re going to notice,” she says, using her thumb and forefinger to measure the width of him. The distance is smaller than a week ago.

“Only a little longer. You heard them. We’re going to be party commodities soon. It will be our best chance.”

And Dagur is a lot of things, a bloodthirsty killer even before she became _draugr_ , but to display tortured prisoners at a party for entertainment is sickening even to her. And she doesn't need phantoms to tell her that her siblings would sooner have rained dragon fire down upon the partygoers than let such a thing happen.

“He should take more of mine. I’m older, I need it less.”

“No. We agreed. We’d give half each. Any less and it wouldn’t be useful. Any more and we wouldn’t be useful.”

“Then _you_ take mine. I can weather the thirst better than you.” Dagur wonders at that. That she would offer at all.

In the past, she never would have dreamed of giving up blood for anyone else. Even when she was human, she was a jealous creature in the midst of battle.

But for Enzo? The one who has kept her grounded and helped her maintain what was left of her sanity?

The least she would sacrifice.

“Please,” he scoffs. “You don’t look any better than I do, love.”

Clenching a fist, Dagur eyes what was left of the muscle of her arm. She was much skinnier than she was when she was first caught, true. She has lost muscle mass and her ribs are visible when she inhales.

But Enzo truly looked worse. There were shadows under his cheeks where there had once been none and his wrists are much thinner, especially compared against the thick bars of their cells.

There is something frail about him now, though his eyes burn as brightly as ever.

“Only because you are normally so very pretty, sólskinið mitt,” she flirts. Over the top and batting her eyelashes, just to see the way his lips tick upwards.

“Flattery? I still won’t change my mind.”

“Truth, and you know it.”

“Ha!” Enzo laughs, more energetic than Dagur has seen him in weeks. “We all know who the pretty one is between the three of us!”

“Damon _is_ very pretty,” Dagur agrees. And he was.

Damon is as beautiful as a weapon drawn. Like a storm at sea, where the sky and the ocean might as well be one, for all that they lash together. You could drown in his eyes and voice and presence before even caring to notice.

Enzo reminded her more of a hearth fire. Bright. Something warm and welcoming and capable of scorching you if you poked it wrong.

Being locked in here alone would have been more torturous than whatever the scientists could have cooked up.

Dagur is--in what would have once garnered the disbelief of her siblings--self aware enough to know that. Whether the dark or the silence would have gotten to her first is the only thing she didn’t know.

So, Enzo, the flame that burns in the dark, and Damon, who reminds her of sailing ships into storms just to chase the wind, give her reason enough to hold onto her mind in this place. Not let the battlelust her clan was known for cloud her mind until there was nothing but red red red left.

They are her North Star on an otherwise black night.

And now she’s getting poetic.

Maybe the lack of blood _is_ getting to her.

“Or you’re just going soft,” fake-Heather goads, shimmering into existence.

Dagur waves her away. Dagur is not going soft. She is the opposite of soft. She’s hard. As rock. Or stone. Or this fucking bed. Her sister just flickers in response, like sunlight on water, and Dagur has to blink away the bright spots she leaves behind.

“No, you,” she mutters at her sister’s smug face, which flickers in and out of reality as it passes through cell bars.

“Your brother?” Enzo guesses, at the words and the way her eyes track empty space.

“Sister,” Dagur corrects, and pulls a face at the way Heather is still smirking at her.

Enzo twists so that he’s closer to her, Damon’s empty cage gaping between them. “Ah. Heather, was it?”

Heather goes to Enzo, makes a big show of looking up and down at him and the way he’s sitting cross-legged and fatigued on the hard stone.

She turns to raise an imperious eyebrow at Dagur. “Clever. Not much of a warrior, though, sister. But, I’m sure that you’ve enough brawn for both of you, and he perhaps enough brains.”

Dagur hums. “Little brat,” she says, fond as she was a thousand years ago.

“Did I ever tell you how we met?” She asks Enzo, and doesn’t watch as Heather strides through a wall, disappearing. She’ll be back. “As adults, when we could both walk and talk and chew solid foods. And throw axes.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just Dagur, Enzo, and Caroline chilling. Then the Mystic Fall's Gang deals with the repercussion of bored vampires. 
> 
> Warnings for: Language, Vampires. And a POV Switch about halfway through. Oh. And Twilight references.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, yes, I am still alive, school was just kicking my ass so I haven't been writing as much.
> 
> But! I have some free time, so there's this!

Dagur might not know what a cheerleader is—a status thing? Some kind of snack according to Damon—but apparently they were _loud_.

Carowyn or Carolena or what the Hel ever has yet to shut up. And Dagur can appreciate a good rant—she can! Her villianous rambles were top fucking notch, thanks. She can even tolerate them in others. Ask Hiccup, whom she graciously let monologue whenever he invented some new gizmo or discovered some new use of dragon spit or whatever! Okay, so Hiccup’s been dead for a thousand years or so but—

“Hey,” Dagur says, cutting off whatever Carolina is saying. “Where is that one lady?”

Enzo raises a brow from where he’s reclined all over Damon’s fancy couch. “I’m afraid you’ll have to be a bit more specific.”

Dagur rolls her eyes. Isn’t Enzo supposed to _know_ these things? “You know. The one with the—” she makes a rude gesture at her chest.

Enzo just keeps looking at her, brow raised higher.

Dagur huffs. “In the swamp?” she prompts. “When Damon drank allllll the liquor and spent the rest of the week puking ‘cause he mixed up the bottles?”

Enzo recognizes the event. “Oh. Glasgow. That witch who lived in the cemetery? With that cat?”

Personally, Dagur would hesitate to call that beast a cat, but sure. “Yes!” she cheers. “Her! I need to talk to her.”

Enzo’s laugh is incredulous. “I’d ask if you were insane, but—” he waves a hand at her, all mud covered and sitting upside down on the eighteenth century armchair that her dearest starshine had once threatened to stake her over.

Dagur blinks guilelessly at him. What? Making Damon mad is good for his health. Keeps him from bottling up all those pretty, pretty emotions he says he doesn’t get.

“I need her _expertise_ ,” she explains, drawing out the word. It sounds all official.

“You're immortal, love. You can’t actually die of boredom,” he drawls, eyeing Constance, who sends him a feral glare at the implication. Could use some work, but Dagur approves. Blondie looks two seconds from stomping her foot when neither of them so much as blink. It’s kinda adorable.

Dagur gives her an approving nod, it’s always good to encourage proper homicidal instincts in the kids. Candycane blinks, breaking out of her murder-face. Dagur turns back to Enzo. “I need to chat with _bruder_.”

Enzo straightens, eyes suddenly intent on her. “Dagur,” he says carefully, subtly tracking her gaze.

She cocks her head in confusion.

Enzo grimaces, just slightly, barely noticeable to anyone who hasn’t known him for decades. He pointedly darts his eyes around the room.

Oh.

“No,” she answers his unspoken question. He thinks she’s hallucinating again. Which. Fair enough. “The witch in Glasgow,” she clarifies. “With the _undead_ pet.”

And Enzo relaxes.

The necromancer in Glasgow who had raised her cat from the dead did seances. Fake ones for tourists. Real ones for anyone who pays enough.

“We didn’t part on the best of terms,” Enzo reminds her.

“We didn’t?”

Enzo gives a half-shrug. “We killed her brother,” he points out.

Dagur blinks. Maybe she’s remembering this wrong, but…. “Wasn’t she also trying to kill him?”

“Think she was just mad we got to it first.”

Candace has had enough. “Hello! I was talking!”

Right. They’re being rude, interrupting the kid’s probably-not-a-villainous-monologue rant.

Dagur shifts so she’s sitting right-way up, then scoots to the edge of her seat and leans forwards, every ounce of attention on Caitlin. Who visibly balks.

Enzo, who is the _best_ , plays along, giving blondie all his attention. Amused, slightly annoyed attention. Dagur keeps her eyes on the blond, but can’t help the way one corner of her lips twitches up at the way the baby vampire hesitates. 

Caro-whatsit is supposed to be here for Vamp101: the Non-Bunny Edition, but somehow this has turned into some kind of rant therapy. Damon is supposed to be the one suffering through this, you know. Because it’s his blood that turned her, but somehow, for some reason Dagur is attributing to Karma, Enzo and Dagur are sitting here listening to a teenage girl talk about her feelings.

Blondie goes back to her rant--Damon ate some of my cheer squad, something, something, some kind of high school thing, Tyler did this, Bonnie did that, some kid named Nathan did this--Dagur starts tuning her out as soon as she mentions pom pom requisitions.

And then she says, “--and Stefan has been all Edward Cullen lately and honestly, does this make--”

And Dagur has an _Idea_.

* * *

“—and that’s why Elena is Bella,” Dagur finishes, with a flourish to a steadily reddening Elena.

“No. Just—no,” the Doppelgänger groans, hiding her head in her hands.

“I don’t—“ Stefan starts, brow furrowed before Bonnie shushes him. Stefan’s brow furrows further. “But I don’t watch her sleep!” he protests quietly. Bonnie shushes him again, her eyes on a twitching Damon.

Damon pinches the bridge of his nose, something close to agony on his face. “Is this what you do?” he demands, when he’s done taking a deep breath. “Is this what you do without supervision!?”

Dagur’s smile is radiant. “Yes.”

Damon gives a full body shudder, hands spasming like he’s trying to resist the urge to strangle her. Or snap her infuriating neck.

“Besides,” Dagur continues blithely, “I had supervision. Enzo was there.”

Enzo doesn’t look up from the magazine he’s leading through even though the room’s attention—half dazed incredulity, half murder vibes—was on him. “Great presentation, love, I especially liked the bit with the flowchart.”

“Why, thank you,” Dagur simpers. "Caroline helped."

Damon’s murderous aura flares. “You,” he growls.

Enzo glances up from his magazine. “Me,” he agrees, a touch smug.

“Why—“

Enzo cuts him off. “Barcelona.”

Damon narrows his eyes.

“1966,” Enzo intones.

Damon blinks. Looks away. And then kind of shuffles in place. “Oh. Yeah. Okay. That’s fair. Cruel. But fair.”

“What happened in Barcelona?” Elena asks.

Stefan shrugs at her.

“No, what I want to know,” Caroline jabs a finger at Dagur, “is how you don’t know what a _cheerleader is_ ,” she spits out like Dagur not knowing this is on par with her being a mass murderer, “but you can give an in-depth analysis on _Twilight_!”

Dagur smirks at her. “Simple. One of those things bothers Damon.”

“One of those things bothers Damon more than the other,” Damon corrects. “And you know what a cheerleader is, you’ve been to schools before— _you’ve eaten cheer squads before_.”

Dagur shakes her head. “Nope. Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“You don’t ring a bell,” Damon mutters.

“Hey, now,” Enzo chides, still reading. “That’s a bit rude, honeybunches, I’m sure Dagur rings lots of bells.”

Dagur leers happily. “Hells yeah I do.”

Damon glares at the both of them. “Don’t call me that. And, you, stop with the face, you’re scaring the children.”

Bonnie is wishing she’d brought a camera. Anything to immortalize this moment. She’d just take out the picture anytime Damon started something--she’s just going to assume it’s going to be sometime soon, Damon’s always starting _something_ \--and maybe it won’t do anything to help the situation, but it’ll make her feel a hell of a lot better to be reminded of the annoyed embarrassment Damon is displaying right now.

She doesn’t like Dagur, who is probably _actually_ insane and more than a danger to the people around her, or Enzo, who watches the world like it’s for his own personal amusement, but sometimes she’s glad they wandered into town. Damon’s a lot easier to poke at now that he has people around him who aren’t five wrong words away from a murder attempt at all times.

Stefan, who’s gotten over the stalking accusation with a grace that implies he’s used to it, smirks. “Mad that in this scenario you're the werewolf puppy?” he asks his seething brother, tone mild, but eyes full of schadenfreude.

Elena giggles at the look on Damon’s face, even as her own still resembled a beet with its redness. “You can share the title with Tyler?” she offers.

Oh, that was mean.

And Damon agrees, because he gives this strained smile and then lunges for a laughing Stefan’s throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh and I have no actual clue if anyone who'll read this cares, but I am working on the second chapter of Gleipnir. Don't know when it'll be ready, but hopefully soon.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Berserker means skin changer, and some things stay in the blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this started off as two separate scenes that I sorta just smushed together because they were too short alone.

“Dagur….”

Dagur looks up from where she’s wiping off her sword. “Hmm?”

Caroline doesn’t know why she has a sword, or why it’s flaking dried blood off onto the carpet. She doesn’t want to know either; what she doesn’t know can’t result in Bonnie giving her judgement eyes.

Enzo tips his head in thought. After a moment he says, “Do me a favor, love. Don’t bite.”

“Wha—“

Enzo zips over to her and straddles her lap, careful to set the sword aside first. He tilts up her chin.

Caroline kind of expects her to throw him across the room but—

“What are you doing?” Dagur asks, watching him patiently.

Enzo studies her face. “Show me your teeth, please, lovely.”

Dagur raises a brow, but complies, vamping out. She bares her teeth in a monsterous smile. Enzo pats her cheek before prying open her mouth.

“Ish thwere ah weason ‘or ‘iss?” Dagur asks.

“Yes,” Enzo says, fingers in her mouth. He pulls back her lips to reveal—

Caroline gasps. “You have Hybrid teeth!” she exclaims, pointing at the double set of fangs on display.

“Ah ‘oo?” Dagur goes cross-eyed trying to look.

Enzo pokes at one of the bottom fangs in fascination. “Is that what these are?” He pulls down her bottom lip further.

It would probably look comical if not for the fangs.

“Yup,” Caroline says, zipping over for a closer look. “Definitely Hybrid fangs.”

The standard vampire fangs are there—bigger than usual, Caroline notes, somewhat apprehensive—but so are the two enlarged bottom canines that mean werewolf.

She goes to lean in but thinks better of it when she catches Dagur’s flat stare. A low growl starts up. Caroline takes a healthy step back; the noise quiets but doesn’t stop.

Enzo ignores it, just prods at the teeth some more. “I’ve seen these before, of course,” he tells an increasingly nervous Caroline. “But we’ve never had a Hybrid to compare them to.”

“Aw ‘oo ‘one ‘et?” Dagur asks.

Caroline takes a tiny step forward, encouraged by Enzo’s confidence. “Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t, huh? Klaus only broke his curse a little while ago. But vampires can’t become Hybrids, so why are her teeth—oh god!” Caroline jumps back.

Enzo raises a brow at her, not even blinking at the way the topic of discussion has chomped down into his hand.

“Ouch,” he says, nonchalant like he wasn’t currently at risk of losing at least two fingers.

The side of Dagur’s mouth twists up into a smirk. Blood wells up and drips down the corner of her lips.

“Thought I asked you _not_ to bite?”

She opens her mouth—now bloodstained—and Enzo withdraws his hand. He eyes the wound; it’s not large, but it is deep and bleeding heavily.

“Didn’t agree,” she explains with a shrug.

“So you bite him?” Caroline asks, wide eyes watching blood drip onto polished hardwood.

It’s vampire blood—it doesn’t smell appetizing—but Caroline still has to focus to drag her eyes away from the steadily growing puddle.

Dagur shrugs again.

Caroline realizes something. “Are you venomous? You have the fangs but—“

“No,” Enzo says dismissively. He studies the rapidly healing bite mark before shrugging and wiping his hand on his pants.

“But how do you _know_?” Caroline demands. She never wants to see someone suffering from werewolf venom again, Rose had really freaked her out, to say nothing of what Damon would do.

Enzo smirks. “You think this is the first time she’s bitten me?”

There’s a split second of relief that no one’s been poisoned before she catches on. If Caroline could blush she would have at Enzo's lascivious wink.

Dagur snorts. “Not in front of the baby,” she says with a jerk of the head Caroline’s way.

Glaring, Caroline says, “I’m seventeen! I’m not a baby.”

At her tone, they both smirk at her, faces inches apart. She belatedly realizes that he’s still on top of Dagur, straddling her lap and breaks eye contact to shuffle in place.

Snorting at her, Enzo stands, moving to lean against a bookcase. After he gets off of her, Dagur picks her sword back up and goes back to wiping it down.

“Ah, yes, the ripe old age of teenager. Truly, an adult.” The brunet vampire flexes his fingers once, as if to make sure they still work before fixing Caroline with an intent look. “You are a baby. You died too young,” he tells her.

It’s not the first time someone’s put it like that—that she died instead of just changed—and she still hates hearing it. But she only flinches a little, meeting his gaze head on.

He tilts his head, something almost like respect in his eyes. “It’ll take a while for all the hormones to level out. And experience will help, but make no mistake, Caroline, you _are_ very young as far as vampires go and being turned before being fully grown doesn’t help.”

“Stefan does okay,” she rebuts. Sure he was a little broody, but he wasn’t turned any older than she was.

Dagur and Enzo share a look.

“No, not really,” he says after a beat.

He doesn’t elaborate, but suddenly Caroline’s gossip senses are tingling. Because, that, that seems important—the wry amusement in Enzo’s eyes at her words and the way Dagur’s smile has gone _mean_ around the edges.

They don’t like Stefan much, she knows. They’re Damon’s friends, so it makes sense that they’re on his side—however flawed it was, she thinks spitefully—but this seems unrelated to that.

They don’t think Stefan’s handled being a vampire well, she realizes. Maybe because of his diet?

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Shrugging a shoulder, Enzo disregards her blatant curiosity. “Nothing. Now, back to the topic at hand—“

“Ah ha! I see what you did there,” Dagur chortles, delighted by the pun. Finishing polishing off the last of the blood, she sheathes her sword in the case leaning against the side of her chair.

Caroline stares at her incredulously.

Enzo rolls his eyes fondly. “You mean what _you_ did there,” he corrects.

“You said it, not me.”

“You’re the one that bit me.”

“You stuck your fingers in my mouth first, buddy.”

“So you bite me? And then make a pun about it?”

“Hey, you made the pun. If it was me it would have been way better, oka—“

“So,” Caroline says loudly, clapping her hands together. “Hybrid fangs. Why?”

Turning away from the world’s dumbest argument, Dagur shrugs. “They’ve always been like that.”

“That was very unhelpful,” Caroline informs her.

Looking annoyed at the scrutiny, Dagur rolls her eyes at them. “It’s not like I’m the only one.”

Enzo looks surprised. “I’ve never seen another vampire with teeth like that,” he says.

Nonchalantly, Dagur tells them, “I have. A few times, not often and not recently.”

Enzo slinks closer, footsteps soundless on the plush carpet of the sitting room. “You’ve never mentioned this before. Define recently,” he suggests, coming to a stop once more within biting range.

“It’s never been relevant before,” she reminds him. “And not within the last couple of centuries. I think the last time was…. Uh. Ireland. Late fifteen hundreds. Maybe.”

Almost choking on an inhale she doesn’t even need, Caroline sputters. “Fifteen hundreds!?”

Dagur side eyes her. “Am I using the wrong calendar again?” she wonders.

“How old _are_ you?” Caroline asks, disbelieving that this woman might be as old as Katherine.

“Good question,” she says and then starts playing with a knife she’s pulled out of nowhere. “Whyyyyy do you need to know?” Dagur asks, spinning it between her fingers.

Caroline drags her eyes away from the way the metal reflects light. She turns a beseeching look at Enzo, who is deep in thought; he’s idly rubbing at his finger and thumb, staring down at the bloodstain on the floor.

No help from there, then. And even if there _was_ someone at the Boarding House with them, they probably wouldn’t be much help either.

Stefan would only be laughed at and Elena doesn’t actually like interacting with Damon’s friends all that much. Caroline doesn’t know what exactly they did, other than leave Bonnie bruised and needing a hospital trip, but Elena keeps a wary distance between her and Dagur as much as she can and still be polite.

Damon, maybe, because he prys things out of people like he can read minds sometimes—oh god, Caroline hopes he can’t actually read minds, the very idea is horrifying, of him being anywhere close to her brain again.

So actually, no. It’s lucky Damon is out, no doubt causing pain and misery somewhere else.

Every time she gets near him her head hurts. Suppressed memories that have been compelled away popping up. It’s disorienting. The memories, and the way his smile makes her want to cover her neck and _scream_ with every glimpse of too-sharp, _oh god what_ is _he_ teeth. And the rage. Caroline knows that every emotion is enhanced now—that she needs to work harder to control everything not just the hunger—but she’s still caught by surprise when she sees her ex-boyfriend/tormentor and she’s torn between running away as fast as her new speed can carry her and ripping out his throat with manicured nails.

Not that she would. She’s not dumb, no matter what Damon thinks. He’d kill her. Or his friends would kill her.

(Or even Stefan, because, _again_ , Caroline is _not_ stupid. Almost two hundred years and both Salvatores are still alive to annoy the other—if they really hated each other like they said they did then at least one would be dead by now.)

“Stefan told me that the older a vampire is, the stronger they are.”

After she pried it out of him. Stefan tried, he did, but he was very close-mouthed about the realities of vampirism other than stressing the need for _control_. Caroline had to ask and barter and bother to get anything else.

(Damon, on the other hand, gave out information like knives. Precise and with the intention to inflict pain. Every so often he’d drop a bomb on her just to watch the way she’d have to incorporate the knowledge into her new reality. It was never for Caroline’s benefit, but she hoarded the moments anyway because knowledge was power and Caroline had never gotten anywhere in life by eschewing either.)

She’s taken to asking Enzo and Dagur things instead. Sure, Dagur’s advice ranged from inane to bloodthirsty enough that it made Caroline nervous to be in her vicinity, but Enzo actually answers her questions sometimes.

Like the witch thing. She had just wanted to know why Bonnie hated her now and last week he’d given her a whole lecture on why witches hate vampires—other than the whole murderous cannibalistic undead abomination to nature thing going on.

Witches were guardians. Of bloodlines, sacred places, or communities. Humanity in general. And vampires preyed on them. Vampires were a danger to their charges and there was an almost instinctive wariness that came with it, some kind of internal alarm bell that rang out distrust and disgust.

Some got over it, he’d explained, and there were plenty of witches who made a living selling magical devices and remedies to the supernatural community. But some didn’t. He’d warned her away from several towns and cities that had magical protection. That if she intruded it could result in her ending up nothing more than a pile of ash.

“Yeah. That’s how it works.” The knife spins faster, Caroline barely able to track it even with her new reflexes.

“So,” Caroline says. “How old are you? Stefan says he thinks you're older than he is, because you’re stronger, but he doesn’t know for sure.”

It’s kinda scary to think about. Stefan’s from the eighteen hundreds as Katherine even more ancient. Dagur being any older than them is something Caroline has trouble wrapping her head around. But she’s a vampire now too. She’s just… going to have to get used to it.

Dagur snorts a laugh. “ _You're_ stronger than he is, baby vamp. Comes with the territory of eating rodents instead of actual food.”

Caroline rolls her eyes. “People aren't food,” she says, somewhat more hesitantly than she would have a while ago. Before eating a few people.

“Sure they are,” Dagur replies. “Good food. Tasty _and_ nutritious, everything a growing vampire needs.”

Caroline huffs. She doesn't really want to argue with the women.

Enzo looks up. “Might be relevant,” he says. "Your age."

Caroline perks right up. “Yeah. It might be relevant. Maybe old vampires just grow in more fangs?” she hazards. “Vampire puberty?”

“Yeah, no,” Dagur rejects. “I’ve always had the same killer smile.”

“You’re not funny,” Caroline tells her, flipping her hair over her shoulder.

“Bloodline trait?” Enzo hazards. “That coven in the Soviet Union had an uncanny ability with dreams, the whole line.”

Dagur’s knife stops spinning. “That…. Makes sense, actually,” she says.

Caroline wrinkles her nose. “What, extra teeth just pop up sometimes?” She’s hoping she’ll get something cool like that dream thing and not extra body parts.

“No. In the blood.” Gaze distant, Dagur sheathes her knife and stands in the same motion. She begins to pace. “Why do the Hybrids have extra fangs?”

“Their werewolf side--ah.” Enzo’s eyebrows bounce up. “I didn’t really think those legends were real,” he confesses.

Dagur stops in her tracks and studies him. “I didn’t know you knew them.”

“I wanted to know more about your people,” Enzo tells her, walking over to stand beside her. Dagur shifts so she’s turned towards him, automatic.

They did that a lot. Them and Damon too. Sometimes Caroline thinks that it’s like they can’t stand not being within arms length at all times, some kind of invisible magnet pulling them into each other’s orbit.

Dagur looks surprised, then happy. Enzo smiles back at her and Caroline is starting to suspect they’ve forgotten she’s here.

She clears her throat. “Your people? Legends?”

Dagur glances over at her. “The Danes.”

Caroline blinks. “Like great?”

“Sure. That too. But more like the Vikings.”

“The--” Caroline takes a deep breath.

Okay. So Dagur is older than she thought. She already knew that. Viking means she’s as old as _Klaus_ though. Which is terrifying. For all manner of reasons.

Enzo interrupts her internal freak-out. “ _Berserker_. Skin-changer. You think it’s werewolf blood.”

Dagur nods distractedly. “Yeah.”

Ruthlessly suppressing any more surprise, Caroline clarifies, “Like a Hybrid,” just to make sure she’s on the same page.

“That would explain the similarities with the teeth.”

“Okay. So this is a thing now. Vikings with werewolf blood and oh my god pleasetellmeyou’renotcursed!”

Enzo looks at her concerned. “Caroline, I know we don’t need to breathe, but you might want to try it.”

Swallowing, Caroline repeats slower, “Please tell me you’re not cursed.”

Dagur grins at her, showing off her fangs. “Chill, _tulta_. I’m not Klaus 2.0. I’m better at monologuing, for one.”

“...not the most comforting, but I’ll accept it. But you’re not a Hybrid, right?” she asks, just to make sure.

“Nah, straight vampire.” Dagur considers that for a beat then snorts. “Actually, I take the straight part back.”

“And I thought werewolves pre-Klaus couldn’t become vampires!?”

“They didn’t. I never activated the curse, just had the blood-potential for it. Apparently, that results in some differences after I died.”

Here Enzo looks disbelieving. “ _You_ never activated the curse? Love, I’ll doubt a lot of things, but not that you’re a born killer, even as a human.”

Waving a hand, Dagur explains, “The change isn’t triggered by killing.”

Caroline makes a face. “Uh, untrue. According to every werewolf I’ve ever met it is.”

“It’s triggered by _guilt_.”

“Wait, what.”

It takes a minute to absorb that. And maybe Caroline is missing something but the implications of that are—

“You never felt guilty?” Enzo asks, curious.

Caroline is also curious, but in a much more horrified kind of way. Holy shit. What kind of actual psychopath was Dagur as a human?

Dagur touches the marks over her eye—which, now Caroline can’t unsee as war paint—and lifts a shoulder. “It was battle. People died. Or it was justice, and they deserved to die. Guilt had no place.”

“There’s a lot to unpack there,” Caroline says, strained. “But let’s focus on one thing at a time. Vampires who _could_ have become werewolves have a few cosmetic differences. Good to know. I mean, the information is completely useless, but hey this was an actually really interesting discussion and my friends will freak when I tell them. So, there’s that.”

“Yeah,” Dagur says, suddenly appearing in front of her, sword-case in hand. Green eyes meet Caroline’s and Caroline freezes. “Let’s skip that part.”

Enzo languidly follows at a much more sedate pace, but Caroline is hyper aware of the way she’s cornered. “Uh. Guys?” she squeaks. Dagur just smiles and Caroline catches on as soon as she sees teeth. “Not that I will. Tell anyone. Anything. Ever.”

Patting her on the head, Dagur brushes past her. “Good baby vampire.”

Still following, Enzo does the same. “See you later, Caroline,” he farewells.

Once they’re out the door, Caroline relaxes.

“Hey,” she hears Enzo say. “Do you think Damon’s done by now?”

“No one’s screaming yet. So probably not,” Dagur replies.

Oh, that does not sound good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> According to a website, tulta is Swedish for little girl or girl toddler. 
> 
> I included a lot of head canons in this one, from the whole bloodline gifts/traits thing to witches being basically magic Sentinels to ‘what happens when you turn a potential werewolf?’
> 
> The teeth are about it, maybe some upped resistance to vervain and strength, but worse mood swings and wolfsbane has some kind of effect. Haven't decided yet. 
> 
> Anyways, the reason Dagur hasn’t seen any other vampires with double fangs in centuries is because werewolves are v rare and are getting more so, since first Mikeal then Klaus started hunting them. 
> 
> The few potentials that were turned into vampires either died or kept quiet about it. 
> 
> The waiting for hormones to filter out of vampires turned at a young age I once read in a True Blood fic that I can't remember the name of. I thought it made a certain amount of sense and sort of internalized the idea, but it's not originally mine. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!
> 
> The next chapter is going to be kind of short and is really just a potential introduction to a thing I might follow up on.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AU of Strikes Thrice.
> 
> Enzo and Dagur didn’t make it out of Augustine. Not for another fifty years at least.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is short and mostly just me being emotional. I was listening to Point Of No Return by Starset and Traitor by Daughtry on repeat.
> 
> This is after Elena's been kidnapped by Augustine and Damon discovers that Enzo's alive. And angry.
> 
> Oh, and warnings for Augustine, betrayal, and mental health issues in addition to language.

Damon winces. “What about—“

Enzo loses his calm. “What do you _think_?” he snarls.

Regaining some of his snark, but still unusually subdued, Damon bites out, “I asked you first.” He gestures to the makeshift and bloody stake discarded on the floor. “Least you could do is answer—“

“The least I can do!” Enzo laughs, short and bitter. “We owe you nothing,” he hisses.

“Look,” Damon can’t meet Enzo’s eyes, “just—… she’s still alive, right?”

“For as long as that lasts.”

Damon’s gaze narrows, he studies his old cell-mate. “Not really an answer, but I’ll take it.”

In the face of Damon’s blitheness, Enzo bursts out, “She’s gotten worse, Day.” Damon startles at the old nickname, then the words catch up to him. Enzo continues, ignoring Damon’s twitch, “You—you left us. And Dagur got worse. I’m not enough anymore,” he divulges, worried and almost guilty.

“Worse? She was already….”

Hallucinating. Reckless. Manic and depressed by turns.

“Five decades in _Hell_ ,” Enzo reminds him, his glare scorching. “There are days when she doesn’t remember learning English. Days I had to convince her that, yes, vervain _does_ burn. They wanted to put her down for the longest time, but you know Augustine. So long as their ‘subjects’ still breathe—or something like it—then we’re useful.”

“Sanity not required. Right. I remember.”

“Do you? Do you really? Sometimes,” Enzo confesses, quiet and _sad_ , “I think they should have. She doesn’t deserve this.”

Damon straightens. “But she deserves _death_!?” he demands, offended and more than a little stunned at what Enzo— _Enzo_ , who hadn’t given up in all the time Damon had known him—is saying.

The other vampire only shakes his head. “You weren’t there. You didn’t see it, the way she slipped. Day, I _can’t help her anymore_. Not all the time. Not even most of the time. It’s like she doesn’t hear me.”

“Where is she?” Damon’s question is a quiet one. Quiet and quietly pained.

Dagur had always seemed so alive. Clever and an utter fool by turns, she had been indomitable not just because of her physical strength.

Enzo deflates, righteous anger burning out, leaving exhaustion in its wake. Equally quiet, he says, “In a cell, still. Me, they can poison and send out to do their bidding,” he sneers, hatred sparking in dark eyes before old pain smothers it, “but she’s the old one, the valuable one.”

“Where?” Damon asks again. “They probably have Elena in the same facility—“

And hate flares back to viscous life. “Elena?” Enzo spits like the name personally offends him. “That’s what you care about right now? You—“ He stops. “You really don't care,” Enzo realizes.

Damon’s heart feels scraped raw. He can’t deal with this.

Enzo and Dagur still being alive, had _been alive_ _all this time_ , Damon not just leaving them to die, but to be tortured, never endingly for half a goddamn century.

It makes him want to gag. Scream. Claw at his own worthless fucking hide.

Once upon a time, Dagur and Enzo had been Damon’s entire world. Funny how being stuck together in a cell would do that. And Damon had killed them, or so he thought.

(Emotions off or no, he’d always _hate-hate- **hated**_ ~~himself~~ Augustine after that. He didn’t even feel pain or guilt or rage and he’d meticulously taken out revenge just like the three of them had once daydreamed about in between torture sessions. And sometimes, somewhere in the empty hollowness of his chest, he’d _ache_ , like he was walking around missing some essential piece and just hadn’t noticed yet.)

And now Elena’s missing and now undergoing the _same thing_ and Damon _can’t stop it_.

“Enzo, _where_ is she,” Damon demands, picturing Elena strapped to a table, her insides on display like a sick science experiment.

“You really don’t care,” Enzo repeats, face blank. “Not about what you did. Not about us. Just Elena.”

“I love her! Of course I’m worried about her. Who knows what Dr. Psycho’s doing right now!”

“And we loved you!”

“... ‘Zo, I—“

Enzo angrily wipes away the blood running down one cheek. “No. It doesn’t matter. Not anymore.”

“You—“

“No.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so that's that. I might be continuing this AU because the entire concept makes me sad and is very emotion-provoking. 
> 
> Feel free to leave any reviews and comments! I always appreciate them. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> And a special thanks to my friend Kirikari who lets me snap her story ideas a fuck o'clock in the morning and is always super supportive of my writing! Thank you!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plans for travel + havoc. Pre-TVD canon, post-Augustine. 
> 
> Warnings for: Language, Mentioned Cheating, Mentioned Child Abuse, Use of Compulsion, Slight Homophobia

“We,” Damon decides, “need a plan.”

Enzo hums in agreement. “As fun as wandering is, an actual destination would be a nice change of pace.”

Staring down at her phone, frantically pressing buttons, Dagur says, a little too casually, “We could always go back to Vienna.” There’s a little tinny death sound and she huffs angrily.

Damon’s reply is immediate and vehemently sincere. “No, no way!”

He’d rather be staked. The very name of the place gives him hives.

Enzo nods thoughtfully, ignoring him. “It was a beautiful city,” he says, the traitor.

Is he agreeing with her!? Goddammit, why? Enzo hated Vienna too—not as much as Barcelona (the second time) but he was more than happy when they finally escaped the godforsaken pit—and he can’t seriously be considering this.

“What part of ‘no’ do you not understand?” Damon demands, only the _teeniest_ bit shrill.

Dagur sends him an amused look before starting her game back up.

Oh. Are they teasing him?

Annoyed, but much less alarmed, Damon glares at her. And fate must be on his side today because not two seconds later there’s another noise that means she’s lost again.

Ah, sweet, sweet karma.

“Din jävla….” With a growl that’s probably a bit too genuine, Dagur shoves her phone into a jacket pocket and makes a face at the overly interested soccer mom two tables down.

The lady keeps gawking. Noticeably at Damon and Enzo and not the woman who just started cussing in a crowded diner--another language or no, some things just came across from tone alone.

Wow, rude.

It’s like she’s never seen a man sitting on another man’s lap before.

Wait, they're in the Bible Belt. So probably not.

Maintaining eye contact, Damon makes himself comfortable, blatantly wriggling into a better position sitting sideways across his friend's lap, one arm around his shoulders. Enzo doesn’t react other than shifting so that Damon doesn’t fall off. The lady flushes and pointedly turns her equally blonde spawn’s highchair so it’s not facing them.

Her husband doesn’t even look up from his newspaper, just nods his head along with whatever his wife is whispering about, all the while shooting the three vampires disgusted looks.

Dismissing her, Damon turns back to Dagur, sitting in the booth across from them and slurping down a milkshake. “Why don’t we just head back to Vegas?” he challenges.

Releasing the straw, Dagur gapes at him. “What, why?” she asks. “I’m still banned for the next decade.”

Yeah. Exactly.

“Shouldn’t have pissed off that mob boss.”

“I didn’t even cheat!”

“Yeah, it _so_ wasn’t you winning slots that pissed him off.”

“Ibiza is nice this time of year,” Enzo chimes in.

Damon and Dagur shut down that suggestion real quick. “ _No_.”

“Why not?” Enzo asks, seemingly actually confused.

Dagur and Damon both stare at him, Dagur over the top of her milkshake and Damon craning back his head.

“You mean other than the fact that the last time we were there you got kidnapped?” Damon asks.

Dagur looks pissy at the memory. “Sunshine, it took us a week to get you back.”

Enzo shrugs. “Seeing as I don’t remember most of that week, I’m not sure it should count.”

“It counts,” the other two chorus.

“Paris,” Damon says after a minute of silence.

“Hah, no,” Enzo rejects. “That coven in the catacombs was creepy. I do not want to run into them again.”

They all make a face at the memory.

“Winnipeg,” Dagur tries.

Damon wrinkles his nose. “I don’t even know where that is. Wait, isn’t that in Canada?”

“Probably.”

“Vetoed. Milan?” Milan could be fun.

Dagur considers it for a second before shaking her head. “Nah. St. Petersburg?”

Enzo’s tone is skeptical. “Russia?”

“Florida,” she corrects. Damon just gives her an unimpressed look. “Fine, what about Bangkok?”

Damon thinks about it. “That… could be fun.”

Wrapping an arm around Damon’s waist, Enzo agrees, “Haven't been there yet.”

Dagur gives one last slurp of her milkshake before it rattles empty. “Aww, I’m out,” she complains. “I’m gonna go get a refill, these things are delicious.” Scooting out of the booth, she asks them, “You guys want anything?”

“Strawberry,” Damon requests.

“Chocolate for me, please, love.”

“Gotcha. Be right back.”

Damon turns to watch her skip past Judgemental In Pink, stopping to lean down and whisper something to her. The husband doesn’t even look up and the spawn’s too busy smashing mashed potatoes to its face to notice much of anything, but the lady stares at Dagur with a haughty kind of affront—until her face goes slack with the tell-tell signs of compulsion.

And they’re behind him and Enzo’s not even looking, but— “Should I give up on drinking that milkshake in peace?” he asks.

Damon blinks innocently up at him. “Now why would you think that?”

“You. Smiling like that.”

“I’d give it a bit,” Damon says, leaning back to watch Dagur finish whatever she was up to and resume her quest for milkshakes. “We probably won’t get the cops called on us.”

“If you say so.”

Patting at Enzo’s shoulder, Damon blithely reassures him, entirely dishonest when he says, “It’ll be fine.”

Of course, the universe decides to prove him wrong not two seconds later.

“I LIKE TO WATCH MY NEIGHBOR’S POOL BOY WHILE HE WORKS,” Pink Woman announces at the top of her lungs.

The diner goes dead silent as the woman climbs on top of her rickety table, bright fuschia heels and pasty ankles on display.

“Ma’am?” One man stands up as if to catch her as she wobbles.

“AND WHILE HE FUCKS MY NEIGHBOR’S WIFE.”

“Margo?” Her husband sounds horrified. The kid laughs delightedly at the show, clapping its hands and splattering food.

“Holy shit,” Damon snickers, “Mrs Brady is actually Peeping Thomina.”

“This is actually better than what I thought would happen,” Enzo snarks.

“Yeah?”

“Well. There’s no blood splatter.”

“ _Yet_.”

“SOMETIMES I PRETEND TO NEED A CUP OF SUGAR JUST TO GET CLOSE ENOUGH TO HEAR.”

“Not gonna lie,” Dagur sets three milkshakes on the table and slides back onto her side of the booth, “not what I was expecting.”

“What _were_ you expecting?” Enzo asks, mildly curious. He takes his chocolate shake and raises a toast to the still ranting woman.

“MARIE NEXT DOOR DOESN’T KNOW WHY HER DOG KEEPS SHITTING ON HER FRONT LAWN. IT'S NOT BECAUSE HE HAS BEHAVIOR ISSUES LIKE SHE THINKS. I JUST GET DRUNK ON SHERRY AND THINK IT’S HILARIOUS.”

“Definitely not that,” Dagur answers, grinning like a loon.

Snorting, Damon shakes with laughter. “Oh, _ew_.”

“ONE TIME I ALMOST GOT CAUGHT BECAUSE MY HUSBAND WAS WALKING OUT OF HER HOUSE AT ONE IN THE MORNING.”

Her husband flushes red, first in embarrassment then in anger. “Margo! Have you been drinking?” he demands.

“YES,” she answers, still belting it out like she’s auditioning for What I Do Behind My Floral Print Curtains. “I DRINK EVERY TIME WE GO TO VISIT YOUR MOTHER.”

There are some snickers from the stunned crowd, but most of the humans are silent, struck dumb by the verbal train wreck still happening in front of them.

“I DON’T CARE THAT SHE HAS CANCER, VISITING TWICE A WEEK IS TWICE A WEEK TOO MUCH.”

The husband, still neon red, stands abruptly. He can’t even speak, just makes a noise like a too-hot kettle.

One of the employees finally works up enough courage to intervene. “Ma’am,” a tired-looking teenager in the diner’s pastel green uniform says, “I’m sorry, but you need to get down.”

“I LIKE TO KICK STRAY DOGS,” is her reply.

“Now that’s just crossing a line,” Damon quips, before humming appreciatively at his milkshake. “Hey, these _are_ good.”

The teenager gives up. “Ma’am if you don’t get down, I’m calling the cops,” he says, and then retreats behind the counter.

Enzo causally leans over to the table beside them, a group of college students, half with their phones out and recording. “Some show,” he comments.

A girl with two pencils holding her bun in place giggles. “That’s Mrs. Peters,” she crows, utterly thrilled. “Bitch gave me a D on my final paper for correcting her the first day of class. Who drugged her food? I want to shake their hand.”

Dagur grins, tongue in teeth, but refrains from saying anything stupid after Damon kicks her under the table.

“Maybe she’s just snapped?” Enzo suggests, wryly, smirking back at a too-smug Dagur. He wrinkles his nose at the woman’s next confession.

“I LOCK MARY-BELLE IN THE CLOSET WHEN SHE CRIES BECAUSE IT’S TOO ANNOYING.”

Mr. Peters stiffens in shock which quickly turns into rage. “You what!?” he demands, one hand going to clutch at the kid’s high chair. Little Mary-Belle babbles excitedly up at him.

The college student is outraged. “That’s just not okay!” Holding up her phone higher to get a better view, she angrily mutters, “I’m sending this shit to the cops.”

“I DON’T KNOW WHY YOU CARE, IT’S NOT LIKE THE BRAT’S YOURS.”

And on that note, the compulsion finally wears off, leaving Mrs. Peters standing on a table in the middle of a diner filled with people staring at her in various combinations of horror, outrage, and amusement.

“I—I don’t know why—“ she stutters, face pale. She quickly climbs down, kicking over plates and cups as she clambers back to the floor. “Stop staring at me!” she shrieks, catching sight of the rest of the diner’s customers.

Mr. Peters scoops the still giggling toddler out of her chair. “Margo, I don’t know what’s gotten into you, and I don’t care. I’m taking _my daughter_ and we’re staying with Mom.” He turns to leave, but right before he does he says, over his shoulder, “And Marie already knows. She’s just waiting until you piss her off again to file a complaint.”

He marches out of the diner, ignoring his wife’s shrieking protests. She quickly hurries after him, covering her face with her hands when she rushes past the people videoing.

“That,” College Girl says, “was more than worth five days of research and eight hours of typing.”

Her friend nods, snickering meanly. “Mrs. Dick might even get fired over this.”

“Thank God,” another girl says, “we should be so lucky.”

“Yeah,” Enzo agrees. “Some luck. Say, how do you ladies feel about Bangkok?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've got like, a bunch of itty-bitty pieces written that I'm trying to make into actual cohesive chapters, but it's slow going. 
> 
> Oh, and if anyone cares idk if I'm gonna make Damon Enzo and Dagur's relationship anything other than like some weird overly close friend thing. On one hand, I kinda want to, on the other, I suck at romance and I started writing this mostly because I wanted Damon to have actual relationships outside of Mystic Falls and love triangles. If anyone has any arguments for either side, I will be more than happy to hear them.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading and thank you to anyone who kudo'd or commented.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sparring in the pre-Ritual days. Maybe as part as a Kill Klaus Scheme? Anyways, Bonnie is Terrifying. But so is Enzo.
> 
> Also, heads up, I am Not Great at actions scenes. I tried, but….
> 
> Warnings for: Language, illness, violence, blood

“And what are _you_ going to try?” Dagur asks, dusting off her hands.

On the ground, Jeremy groans. Sparing a thought to wince at the bruises he’s going to have tomorrow, Bonnie steps up and forcibly steadies her hands.

“I’m going to put you in the dirt,” she says, confident as she can.

She had spent more than one night researching this—and for more than one reason. If it worked in a spar, then maybe Bonnie will be able to use it in an actual fight.

Dagur studies her for a full heartbeat, head tilted to the side and eyes sharper than Bonnie is used to. It’s disconcerting. When the vampire stops acting like a fool to show the predator underneath.

And Bonnie knows she can _hear_ the way her heartbeat spikes, but she keeps her cool. Just casually walks past a limping Jeremy and into the ring, until she’s only about ten feet away from the vampire who’s about to do her best to beat her down.

Bonnie takes a deep breath and squares her jaw. Not today.

“This should be good.” Dagur rubs her hands together and shoots a broad grin over Bonnie’s shoulder at where Enzo and Alaric are chatting. Probably about alcohol. “Going to cheer me on?” she calls out.

Enzo glances up. “I have complete faith in you….” Dagur preens. “Bonnie,” he finishes, and then laughs at Dagur’s indignant ‘ _what_?’

“Thanks,” Bonnie mutters, knowing he can hear her, loud and clear.

Jeremy, having made it to where Alaric and Enzo are standing, says, “You’ve got this, Bonnie!” Bonnie sends him a smile.

Pouting, Dagur focuses back on Bonnie. “Right,” she says, and then a grin takes over her face. “How d’you want to do this? Hand to hand? Blades?”

“Magic,” Bonnie answers, and then focuses on the ebb and flow of the energy around her.

Dagur cocks her head. “That sounds fun. Alright. Go.”

And then she’s gone, disappearing in a burst of speed and then reappearing two feet from Bonnie, much too close of comfort. Bonnie flinches back at the sudden proximity, but quickly gains her bearings and throws up a wall of fire. It’s not an easy spell, but she manages, flames flaring a good few feet in the air in a circle around her.

Dagur jumps backwards, out of the line of fire. “Ouch,” she pats out some flames on her arm, “nice plan. But now you’re stuck there.”

“And you’re stuck out there,” Bonnie shoots back. The flames flare higher.

Dagur nods, smug. “Yeah, but,” she picks up a rock, “I have ammo.”

Shit.

Bonnie does not feel like dodging rocks for an hour. It whizzes past her head and Bonnie hears Jeremy yelp from behind her. She doesn’t turn to look, just keeps her eyes on Dagur.

“What the hell!” Jeremy yells. “Watch where you're aiming!”

“You missed,” Bonnie taunts. She begins muttering a string of Latin under her breath.

“I never miss,” Dagur says back, and then huffs impatiently. “Are we going to stand here all day or…?”

Finishing her spell, Bonnie raises a hand and points, releasing the energy she’d been gathering since the beginning of the spar. There’s no change, no visible reaction, but the circle of fire sputters out, all of her energy used up.

“Finally,” Dagur cheers, and takes a menacing step forwards. “Now, let’s get to the fun part. Just you and me and no fire-walls between us. Are you sure you don’t want to try hand-to-hand? I promise I won’t hit you _too_ hard.”

Bonnie doesn’t move, just watches.

Suddenly, a funny expression crosses Dagur’s face. She stares blankly over Bonnie’s shoulder. “I don’t“ —she sways, unsteady— “I don’t feel so good.”

Staggering, she takes a single step backwards, then blurs; but she doesn’t make it out of their makeshift arena, just falls to her knees right there in the dirt. She heaves, once, twice, until a river of blackish blood pours out of her mouth. When she looks up, her eyes are hazy, glazed over in what must have been severe nausea.

Bonnie would almost feel sorry for her, but then she remembers what, exactly, the vampire is puking up.

“What did you—“ she mumbles, but it’s cut off by another stream of hellish vomit.

Bonnie doesn’t have time to feel more than fleetingly smug—she told the vampire she’d make her fall in the dirt—because—

“What _did_ you do, Bonnie?” Enzo asks, suddenly in front of her. His face and voice are as friendly as ever, but there’s a light in his eyes that reminds her of Damon, right before he snaps a neck.

Bonnie swallows and doesn’t like the way he follows the motion. Squaring her shoulders, she says, “A spell.”

Behind them, Alaric and Jeremy stiffen, hands reaching for weapons they can’t use because Enzo is too close—he’d kill her before they could load their crossbows. And that spell won’t keep Dagur down for long. Plus, Bonnie is exhausted, magic gone. She’d be no help in a fight right now.

Dagur pukes again, a thin string of red-tinged bile escaping her lips. A ragged groan follows. “‘M sick?” she asks, dazed and confused. “I don’t get—“

Her arms give out, sending her sprawling into the dirt, inches from the puddle of sick. She groans again, clutching at her stomach.

“What did you _do_?” Enzo asks again, a little more forcefully. Bonnie’s attention snaps back to the angry vampire not two feet from her.

“It—I just—“ Forcibly steeling herself, Bonnie looks him dead in the eye. “I rotted all the blood in her stomach. That’s all.”

Holding eye contact, Enzo smiles, nice and slow and making sure to display teeth. “That’s all?” he asks.

“That’s all,” Bonnie repeats. She doesn’t relax, even when he takes a step back, smile suddenly much less threatening.

“No lasting effects?” he checks, making his way to crouch beside a still occasionally gagging Dagur.

Bonnie shakes her head. “No. Just the—“ she wrinkles her nose at the pile of ick two inches from Enzo’s shoes “—that.”

She clenches a fist and glares down at her shaking hands. He didn’t even do anything. Just asked a question and smiled but Bonnie is acting like she got her throat torn open. Again.

God, she hates vampires. Everything about them put her on edge, like she can just _feel_ the monsters under their skin, watching her, waiting to pounce.

“‘Zo?” Dagur slurs from the dirt, still out of it. Enzo murmurs something to her, too low for the humans to hear.

“Bonnie?” Jeremy puts a hand on her shoulder and she only jumps a little. “You good?” he asks, eyes concerned, crossbow in hand and now loaded.

Alaric is beside him, face neutral but his weapons are also ready to be used at a moment's notice.

Bonnie gives them a grim smile. “More than,” she answers.

It worked. The spell took Dagur out of the fight and kept her out of it—far longer than any other spell in her admittedly meager repertoire. Aneurysms didn’t work. She had tried that and had spent weeks covering up the bruises to prove it. Bonnie had needed _something_ in case the vampire ever threatened her loved ones.

And now she has it.

Alaric just eyes her, thoughtful—and maybe Bonnie just is projecting the hint of hint of pride she sees there as well.

“Some spell,” he notes.

“Yeah,” Jeremy agrees, glaring a little Enzo’s way. “And what was that about? You won. It’s a spar.”

Alaric shrugs, absently holstering his crossbow now that it doesn’t look like a fight is about to break out. “I think he was just worried.”

They turn to look at the two vampires, and Enzo is poking a still groaning Dagur in the side.

“Yeah,” Jeremy says, sarcastic. “Really worried over there.”

They watch Enzo haul her up, supporting her with an arm around her waist, hers thrown over his shoulders. “Feeling better?” he asks, hauling her over to the rest of them.

Dagur huffs a laugh, black blood staining her chin. “I think I’m sick of magic,” she says, and sends a conspiratorial smirk at Bonnie.

Bonnie gives an awkward smile back, more than a little confused. She had just made the woman violently ill and now she was getting puns? Bad puns, even.

“I will drop you,” Enzo threatens, but only shifts his grip so Dagur is more secure. Dagur grins at him, teeth stained with gore.

“You can’t, I’m ill. I’m an invalid. You can’t drop an invalid.”

“You’ve pronounced insane wrong,” Enzo corrects.

“That too,” Dagur agrees. “But seriously, don’t drop me. I might puke again.”

“Not a great argument for keeping hold of you, cupcake.”

Dagur goes green. “Maybe--maybe don’t mention food right now.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Escape from Augustine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh. This is an Augustine Ch. so, warnings for, but probably not limited too--pls don’t hesitate to say if I missed smth: Fire, Death, Blood, Torture, Vampires. 
> 
> Second chapter of the day! I've been on a roll recently and Strikes Thrice has sorta taken over my brain.

The first thing that goes wrong is this: They’re separated.

All the years previous, every other horror show of a Christmas party, they had been kept in the same cage. This year, Whitmore decided to keep them apart, spread them out. Something about aesthetic choices—Damon had been too busy silently cursing to pay too much attention. It was more than inconvenient. The whole thing puts Damon on edge; he has to work to appear as resigned, as hopeless and resentful as he had parties past.

The second thing that goes wrong is this: Someone knocks over a candle.

And suddenly Damon is staring at Enzo, surrounded by flames. It’s Katherine all over again. Fire and screaming and Damon helpless to do anything but watch. He can’t free Enzo, and had burned his hands on the vervain-coated cage trying.

It hurts. His chest feels tight and breathing is difficult from more than just the smoke. Damon has never been so tempted to turn it all off in his long and miserable life. He… he won’t be able to leave without it. Every emotion he has is screaming for him to try again, to ignore the flames and the impossibility of escaping alive, but he can’t--he knows he can’t. Can’t free his friends, can’t die here--not with Katherine waiting for him, not with Stefan still out there.

“Damon, _come here_ ,” Dagur orders, and suddenly Damon can understand why people once followed her into battle.

Fire spreading and hands eroded to the bone, Damon is helpless to do anything but listen.

He runs across the ruin of the room over to her, almost tripping on a still twitching corpse in his haste. Then he flinches at the sight of her behind those bars. Like with Enzo, he can’t _do_ _anything_ , the metal and the vervain are too strong; it doesn’t matter how many party guests he drank or their plan—which worked but not like they hoped—he can’t do it, can barely bring himself to try, knowing he’ll fail again.

“I _can’t_ ,” he says, almost a sob—

Her arms shoot out of the cage and she _yanks_ , slamming him into a rough kiss through the gaps of her cage. He’s stunned, more than a little, and doesn’t really start processing things until he almost chokes on a gush of blood.

She had sliced open the artery in her tongue on a fang. He swallows, automatic, and jolts at the taste, almost breaking the kiss. She growls against his lips and pulls him closer, all but shoving blood into his mouth.

And he knew she was old—she spoke _Old Norse_ for fuck’s sake— but she tasted like _lightning_ , every drop a spark on his tongue. It’s like drinking down a storm, energy surging through her and into him, overwhelming.

This goes on for about a minute, smoke getting thicker and the vervain on the bars stinging at them when they get careless. Damon almost doesn’t care, the power in her blood healing him as fast as he burns. Skin regrows on his hands, and he flexes them against empty air before clutching at her forearms.

Dagur pulls back and almost falls where she stands. Damon almost burns his face chasing after the taste of her. “Try again,” she slurs, close to incoherent from the lack of blood.

Hands completely healed and all but vibrating with stolen energy, Damon nods, trying hard not to hope. But he’s stronger than he’s been in years and her blood is kicking all of his senses into high gear. The fire is brighter, the shadows deeper, and he can hear dying breaths and sighs over the too-sharp crackle of flames.

They might even live to regret this later.

All of them.

He thinks of Enzo, still trapped across the room in the thick of the fire and smoke and ignores the agony of vervain as he wraps his hands around the bars.

God, please, let it be all of them.

He tries again. And this time the bars bend, just enough so that Dagur can slip through, Damon catching her as her legs give out.

He sits her down next to a corpse and she immediately rips out its throat; uncaring of the cooling and congealing blood.

He flashes back to Enzo’s cage, moving faster than he has ever before—the blood or desperation? he doesn’t have time to wonder—and repeats the process, the burn of vervain mingling with the heat of nearby flames.

“I knew you’d come back,” Enzo manages, voice ruined from smoke. There are tear streaks in the ash on his face.

“Of course,” Damon chokes out, like he hadn’t been two seconds from turning it all off and bolting. He forcibly suppresses the thought and tugs Enzo so that Damon can half carry him away from the remains of his cage, fire swallowing it as they hurry away.

They struggle back to Dagur, Damon supporting Enzo all the way. The smoke is too thick to see more than two feet in front of them at a time and Damon is growing more and more anxious the longer they can’t find her. Between the fire and the smell of burning flesh, the place really does look like hell.

“Red?” he calls out, coughing at the lung full of smoke that follows.

“Dagur?” Enzo tries to call her name, but it comes out more of a rasp than anything. “Where is she?” he asks, worry creasing his face.

Damon panics, thoughts spiraling. What took her? The fire? Some attendant that had somehow escaped the bloodbath?

There’s a crash, something obscured by the thick curtain of smoke brought down by fire-damage, and Damon is abruptly reminded that they’re on a time-clock.

“C‘mon,” he prays, “don’t do this, not when we’re so close.” They can’t stay in here for much longer. Vampires might not technically _need_ to breathe, but smoke inhalation will still knock them out, and Damon does _not_ want to take his chances with the flames.

And he’s flagging, fast, any energy Dagur had shared draining out of him with every almost human-quick beat of his heart.

He’s this close to dragging Enzo out of there while he still can when they trip over her.

“Ow,” Damon gasps, having landed in what feels like a pile of broken glass. He pulls an inch long shard out of his hand. Yeah. Definitely broken glass.

Enzo lands on what at first Damon thinks is just another body, but—

“Oh thank fuck,” Damon groans from where he’s sprawled on the filthy floor. He’d recognize that bright red disaster anywhere.

She—and now Enzo too—are laying in what looks like a corpse and a half of dismembered parts. Dagur is unconscious, probably from the blood loss on top of the smoke inhalation. One mostly drained corpse probably hadn’t done much to restore what Damon had taken.

“Luck of the devil,” Enzo gasps, a breathless chuckle. Then he violently pinches the nearest vulnerable place in reach, the side Dagur’s face, right over a sluggishly healing burn.

She flinches, hard, but her eyes open and that’s all Damon cares about right now. “‘Zo? Day?” she garbles at them, dazed and in pain.

Damon hauls himself upright and then drags Dagur to her feet. “Time to go,” he tells her, and grabs Enzo’s arm again. Enzo stands, Damon steadying him as he wobbles.

The fire is hotter than ever, smoke thick in the air, and Damon doesn’t quite remember what direction the door is in. But they’re all standing.

“Right behind you,” Dagur promises, only staggering a little.

“Finally,” Enzo snarks, one hand on Damon’s shoulder and the other tangled with hers like he’s afraid she’ll get lost, “I was getting a little tired of this party anyways.”

* * *

They blink up at the sky, all three of them covered head to toe in soot and gore and disbelieving wonder that the stars above them still shone as bright as ever. Smoke rises lazily out from the ruin of the once-grand house behind them, the wind scattering it before it impedes their view of the stars.

Enzo is swaying in place on unsteady legs, staring up, unblinking and entranced. His arm is still slung over Damon like it’s the only thing keeping him on his feet.

Dagur had collapsed as soon as they stopped, dropping to the ground to sprawl on her back. She’s muttering to herself, deliriously happy. Gore drips from her skin and she licks at one hand, never taking her eyes away from the sliver of moon above them.

Damon is shaking, subtle tremors that he’s doing his best to ignore. Every few seconds he squeezes Enzo, like he needs the reassurance that he won’t disappear if he’s not touching him.

Enzo drags his gaze away from the first glimpse of the sky he’s had in a decade and a half as a free man.

“Damon,” he says, voice harsh and rasping from the smoke. He falters. “Damon,” he repeats. Starlight glitters in dark eyes.

“Enzo,” Damon echoes him. And then collapses onto the ground beside Dagur, legs unfeeling, adrenaline suddenly gone. He hits the soft, dew coated grass and stays there, just breathing in the night air.

Enzo tumbles down next to him with no one to hold him upright. “Damon, we’re out.”

Damon hums in agreement and, in a display of strength only possible because of all of what he drank, tugs Enzo towards him, until they’re both a tangle of limbs. “We’re alive,” he says, disbelief and joy warring in his voice. “We made it. We _all_ made it.”

Enzo’s laugh is muffled by Damon’s chest, but it’s bright and free and Damon’s smile in response isn’t something he could have stopped. “I told you so,” he says. “I told you we would.”

“I guess I owe you that drink,” Damon mumbles into Enzo’s blood and ash matted hair. Enzo doesn’t answer, just presses a grin into Damon’s skin.

Dagur rolls towards them, leaving red smears on green grass. Damon and Enzo waste no time in dragging her closer, until she’s pressed close, none of them separated by bars or otherwise. She smushes her face into Enzo’s chest and wraps her arms around them both.

She babbles something at them in Norse, too fast and emotion slurred for Damon to understand.

Enzo apparently picks up on some of it though, because he starts shaking—Damon was concerned for a split second before he realized it was laughter—and says, “The same to you. And I am as well. Not enough hors ‘devours at the party, huh, lovely?”

Settling further into the grass, Damon isn’t even annoyed by the dampness seeping through his thin clothing. “Do I want to know?” he asks, still smiling up at the night sky.

Dagur repeats herself, this time in English, “You’re as gorgeous as the sky and I am still hungry.”

Snorting a laugh, Damon rolls so he’s kneeling, Dagur and Enzo both staring up at him with red grins and something he refuses to identify in their eyes.

Damon isn’t. He’s a vampire, he’s always some level of hungry, but for the first time in years he’s not about to snap and lunge for the nearest throat. Draining Augustine had rejuvenated him—physically and mentally. Nothing like a good spot of bloody revenge to bolster the spirit.

She had eaten one of them, all but ripping apart the body to get to the blood inside, but he doesn’t ask why she still wants more. On top of Damon draining what must have been half her blood for it to have been such a boost of strength, she and Enzo drank even less than he did for the duration of their entire insane, madcap plan. He doesn’t know how they did it—he doesn’t think he could have—but it worked.

It _worked_ —not exactly as they planned, but— They were out. Out, escaped, _free_.

And there was a whole world out there waiting for them.

“Well,” he tells them, “let’s go find seconds.”

He wraps his hands around theirs, all of them equally blood-stained, and tugs them up.

They walk off into the night, hell smoldering behind them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, I’ve had this chapter started for forever but never finished it until I was listening to Fall Out Boys’ Church and got smacked in the face by the inspiration stick. Listen, I was totally picturing Damon just,,,, falling to his knees before a burning building, flashbacks of Katherine mixing in with Augustine’s collapse, as the song’s last ‘if you were church, I’d get on my knees’ echoed out until the crackling of fire and distant screaming overwhelmed it. 
> 
> So, originally, Damon was supposed to drink from Dagur’s wrist as a strength boost. But then I remembered that those veins can be slow and also the artery in the tongue would not only be faster but would be wayyyy more dramatic. I mean, a desperate first-and-maybe-last kiss framed by fire? I live for that shit. It's not meant to be romantic, more dramatic, but read into it what you'd like.
> 
> And, yes. There will be Consequences for blood-sharing. In canon, I know it’s considered an intimate thing, but it had, like, no nutritional value. Like junk food, I guess? Maybe more like eating junk food naked while cuddling, but…. In this, I’m thinking more: blood=food=energy, so it’s like energy sharing. Still intimate and can result in a temporary boost of strength that can be influenced by the ages of the vampires participating. And it will have Consequences. I have Ideas.
> 
> And thank you to every one who left kudos and feedback! I hella appreciate all of them!


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